An advanced numerical approach on tool wear simulation for tool and process design in metal cutting

Tool wear is an important criterion in metal cutting affecting part quality, chip formation and the economics of the cutting process. In order to account for tool wear adequately in tool and process design, simulation tools predicting tool wear in metal cutting processes are required. Within this paper, an advanced simulation approach is presented, coupling FE simulations of chip formation with a user-defined subroutine which extends the functionalities of the commercial FE code for wear simulation laying the focus on the development of this method. The continuous process of wearing is discretized in finite steps and the wear rate is modelled to be constant between. Based on the Usui wear rate equation, the local thermo-mechanical load obtained by FE simulation is transformed into local wear rates. The geometric representation of the wear progress is implemented via shifting of the finite element nodes of the engaged tool domain. A novel iterative procedure of updating the tool geometry in order to account for the wear progress is presented.