A thermo-mechanical model of dry orthogonal cutting and its experimental validation through embedded micro-scale thin film thermocouple arrays in PCBN tooling

• A detailed thermo-mechanical model for dry orthogonal cutting is proposed.
• Contact parameters in cutting interaction zones are modeled and predicted.
• Feasibility and capacity of model are verified by experimental measurements.
• Cutting force in machining is affected by contact states in cutting zones.
• Heat dissipation and generation enable explanation of temperature evolution.

Cutting temperature and its distribution in the cutting zone are a critical factor that significantly affects tool life and degrades part accuracy during metal removal operations. However, issues surrounding their modeling and experimental validation in the immediate cutting zone still remain an unresolved issue. A major impediment is the unavailability of adequate temperature measurement methods with sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to measure actual temperatures and validate predictive models. In this paper, a model for the dry orthogonal cutting process with thermo-mechanical coupling effects, i.e., interactions between the stress state, strain rates and the temperature softening of material in the plastic deformation zone, is proposed to predict cutting temperature distribution in the cutting zone. The feasibility and prediction accuracy of the model is verified by experimental measurements through Thin Film Thermocouple (TFTC) arrays embedded at the immediate vicinity of the cutting zone into Polycrystalline Cubic Boron Nitride (PCBN) tooling. The experimental verification is performed under hard turning conditions. It has been shown that the predictions of the proposed model are in very close agreement with the experimentally measured results including the cutting forces, chip thickness and cutting temperature distributions on the rake and flank faces in the cutting zone. Furthermore, the modeling results have also provided an essential understanding on the stress distributions at the tool/chip and work/tool interfaces as well as of the nature of the chip flow velocity along the rake face of the cutting tool.