Analysis for the wear resistance anisotropy of diamond cutting tools in theory and experiment

In this work, the dynamic micro-mechanical strengths of diamond crystal are deduced in theory, including the tensile, shearing and compressive strengths. The calculated results reveal that the dynamic micro-mechanical strengths have great anisotropy, but the tensile strengths are less than the shearing and compressive ones in any orientation of any plane. Subsequently, a novel evaluation factor is proposed, which integrates from the theoretical tensile strength in the orientation of flank face paralleling to the cutting direction and the theoretical tensile strength in the orientation of rake face paralleling to the chip flowing direction. And then as expected, the anisotropy of the resistance to wear of diamond cutting tools can be predicted exactly through comparing the evaluation factor. Theoretical analyses indicate the larger the evaluation factor, the greater the wear resistance of diamond cutting tool is. Finally, the cutting experiments are carried out on the (1 1 1) silicon wafers, and the sampled data are well consistent with the theoretical predictions, which validates that the proposed evaluation factor is suited for predicting the anisotropy of the resistance to wear of diamond cutting tools.