Experimental and numerical study of laser-assisted machining of Ti6Al4V titanium alloy

• The understanding of the physical phenomena during laser assisted machining and the optimization of this process.
• Shear band formation.
• Significant reduction in the cutting force up to 55%.
• An increase in the width of the chip and in the shear angle when machining with laser assistance.

Laser-assisted machining combines several experimental parameters such as cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut, laser power and distance between tool rake face and the laser beam axis. The optimization of these parameters is necessary to ensure the efficiency of assistance and to increase productivity. This paper focuses on the understanding of the physical phenomena during laser-assisted machining, and on optimising this process. This contribution is based on an experimental and a numerical study. The experimentalpart highlights the effects of the laser power as well as the distance between the tool rake face and the axis of the laser beam. As for the numerical part, it was performed on the ABAQUS/Explicit software.The proposed model improves the understanding of the physical phenomena of chip formation and the cutting force reduction when machining with laser assistance. In addition, this model allows a better optimization of laser and cutting parameters.Numerical findings generally corroborate experimental results and can lead to some other information difficult to catch experimentally.The main contention in the paper is that the distance between the axis of the laser beam and the tool rake face is the most important parameter that controls the reduction of the cutting force. This cutting force reduction can exceed 50%.