SIMULATION OF THE PROCESS STABILITY OF HPC MILLING OPERATIONS

Abstract

The optimisation of high-performance cutting (HPC) processes under technological and economical aspects often proves to be extremely difficult due to the appearance of process instabilities, so-called “chatter”. The identification of ideal process parameters often involves the systematic testing with varied cutting parameters. Simulation of the process stability offers a less costly way of optimising processes prior to production. However, the predictions for the stability of high performance milling processes exhibit great deviation from experimental results. The objective is to analyse and to prevent errors within the simulation methods to make stability simulation a reliable tool in process planning. In order to improve the quality of stability simulation, the interacting Systems “Machine Tool” and “Cutting Process” are analysed individually. Methods for the coupled simulation of both systems are implemented to identify stable working conditions. As a result of this work, a time domain simulation environment for the investigation of high performance milling operations is presented. It considers the complex behaviour of the cutting process as well as the speed dependent machine tool dynamics. Cutting tests have been conducted to verify the benefit of the enhanced simulation method.