Abstract
Nickel base and titanium base materials have been widely applied to engines in aerospace industry, and these engines are essential components of airplanes. The machining characteristics of aerospace materials may cause machining cutters to be worn down in a short time and thus reduce the accuracy of processing. The plasma-assisted machining adopted in the research is a kind of the complex machining method. In the cases of nickel base and titanium base alloys, the method can heat workpieces in an extremely short duration to soften the materials for the ease of cutting so that the cutting force, cutter wear, and machining cost will all be reduced. The research adopted plasma heating to soften parts of the materials and aimed to explore the heating of nickel base alloy. The temperature variation of the materials was investigated and measured by adjusting the current and feed velocity. Moreover, Inconel-718 superalloy was adopted for the comparison with nickel base alloy for the observation of the influence and change brought by heat, and the method of exponential smoothing was adopted to conduct the prediction and analysis of thermal diffusion for understanding the influence and change brought by electric current on nickel base materials. Finally, given the current from 20 A to 80 A and feed velocity from 1,000 mm/min to 3,000 mm/min, the influence of thermal diffusion was investigated and the related model was built.
Highlights
Today, high heat-resistant materials of high strength have been widely applied in aerospace industry and national defense industry
Anderson et al [4] investigated the laser-assisted machining for Inconcel-718 and analyzed the machining cost. e results showed that the cutting force can be reduced by 25%, surface roughness can be 2-3 times better, and the life of the cutter can be extended by 200% to 300% if the removal temperature of materials is increased from the room temperature to 360°C
Measurement of Inconel-718 Temperature Distribution. e impacts of current and feed velocity on temperature are discussed . e temperature was measured through the thermocouples installed in the workpiece
Summary
High heat-resistant materials of high strength have been widely applied in aerospace industry and national defense industry. Eir experiments indicated that both laser-assisted machining and plasma-assisted machining provide great surface accuracy and removal rate for difficult-to-machine materials. Advances in Materials Science and Engineering that the cutting force can be reduced by 25%, the lifetime of the cutter can be extended by about 100%, and the removal rate can be enhanced by 250% It indicated the importance and the significant difference caused by preheating with an additional heat source. E results showed that the cutting force can be reduced by 25%, surface roughness can be 2-3 times better, and the life of the cutter can be extended by 200% to 300% if the removal temperature of materials is increased from the room temperature to 360°C. Nickelbased alloys have low thermal conductivity, machining hardness, and the affinity between the tool and the chip to cause rapid tool wear [13, 14]
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