Extended infrared thermography applied to orthogonal cutting: Mechanical and thermal aspects

• An infrared thermography workbench is presented to investigate orthogonal cutting.
• A lot of mechanical and thermal data are acquired and processed.
• The reliability of usual assumptions is challenged through the experimental setup.
• A tool–chip contact length determination technique is tested.
• Global and local results are compared with previous works when possible.

The temperature knowledge is essential to understand and model the phenomena involved in metal cutting. A global measured value can only provide a clue of the heat generation during the process; however the deep understanding of the thermal aspects of cutting requires temperature field measurement. This paper focuses on infrared thermography applied to orthogonal cutting and enlightens an original experimental setup. A lot of information were directly measured or post-processed. These were mainly focused on the geometrical or thermo mechanical aspects of chip formation, i.e. tool–chip contact length, chip thickness, primary shear angle, heat flux generated in the shear or friction zones, and tool–chip interface temperature distribution. This paper proposes an experimental setup and post-processing techniques enabling to provide numerous, fundamental and original information about the metal cutting process. Some comparisons between collected data and previous experimental or theoretical results were made.