A new abrasive wear law for the sticking and sliding contacts when machining metallic alloys

• The sliding and sticking zones at the tool–chip interface and tool wear are some of the most important phenomena considered.
• The model is a new approach which predicts the local abrasion wear.
• The model can be exploited in an optimization procedure to choose which cutting conditions have to be used.
• The main contribution concerns the role of theoretical modeling in understanding wear phenomena.

Abrasive wear was usually identified as the main wear mode occurring at the tool–chip and the tool–workpiece interfaces during machining operations such as turning, milling, and drilling. From an experimental point of view, the mechanisms governing the abrasion process are still not fully understood. This is due on one hand to the contact confinement between tool and workpiece and on the other hand to the high thermomechanical loading applied to the cutting tool during a machining process. Abrasion is often assumed to be closely linked to the microstructure of materials and caused by hard particles trapped at the tool–workpiece interface. The objective of this research work is to develop a predictive wear modeling taking into account the sliding and sticking nature of the contact. The proposed model is based on an analytical approach including a statistical description of the distribution of particles. The latter are assumed with a conical shape and embedded in the contact area. The volume of the removed material per unit time is chosen in this study as the main parameter to describe the abrasive wear mode. The sliding and sticking zones at the tool–chip and tool–workpiece interfaces depend on the evolution of the local conditions of stress, the sliding velocity and the friction coefficient. A new abrasive wear law is then proposed to estimate the tool life which is often considered in industrial applications. Finally, a parametric study was performed to highlight the influence of cutting conditions and the contact nature on the productivity rate for a given tool-material combination.