Numerical Analysis of Flushing-Induced Thermal Cooling Including Debris Transport in Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM)

The temperature field is the main material loading responsible for rim zone modifications in EDM and is required to establish a correlation with the resulting material modifications. Due to the large temperatures and gradients direct measurements are quite challenging. Numerical simulations of the dielectric fluid are performed in combination with thermographic measurements to determine the thermal cooling resulting from the flushing process including the particle transport. The resulting heat-transfer parameters account for the cooling due to flushing and can be used in models of the complete EDM process to determine the temperature field.