Transient Wear Modelling of Coated Cutting Tools

Tool wear significantly contributes to machine downtime. Therefore, methods for describing tool wear are crucial for both end users and researchers aiming to develop wear-resistant coatings to enhance overall equipment effectiveness. Finite Element Method (FEA) cutting simulations have proven to be reliable predictors of wear, offering valuable insights into cutting tool behavior. These simulations focus on the thermo-mechanical steady-state of the cutting process and discretize the geometry update of cutting inserts into several steps, typically spanning several seconds. Consequently, manually updating nodes to model wear during the transient cutting process is impractical due to rapidly changing state variables. This limitation has led to less research on the transient phase of cutting regarding wear modeling. However, processes like profile grooving often entail significantly reduced cutting times compared to traditional lathe operations, amplifying the significance of the transient cutting phase. To facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of wear progression during the transient cutting phase, novel approaches are essential. This study introduces a methodology based on implementing Python algorithms to automate wear progress calculation in DEFORM-2D for each tool node in contact with the chip or workpiece. This approach executes node updates and continues the simulation in a loop, allowing users to freely define the geometry update interval, constrained only by the simulation’s step size. As a result, wear progression during the transient cutting phase can be accurately modeled with greater precision through a fully automated Python script.