CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE DIRECTION IN THE NUMERICAL MODELING AND SIMULATION OF MACHINING PROCESSES: A CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper presents a literature review on modeling and simulation of the metal cutting process, with special consideration to difficult-to-cut materials. The critical issues in the modeling of the cutting process are presented and investigated, which include the identification and formulation of the material constitutive equation, as well as the models that describe the tribological and thermal interactions at the tool-chip interface. The available approaches for generating constitutive data are critically examined, and their advantages, capabilities and limitations are discussed. The formulation of the constitutive equation significantly affects the accuracy of the finite element (FE) simulation. The evaluation criteria proposed recently by the authors to assess the goodness of different constitutive relationships for the machining process are presented. It is shown that more accurate simulation can be obtained when using a pressure-dependent friction model, compared to that with uniform coefficients. Similar conclusion can be drawn in relation to expressing the thermal contact resistance (or conductance) as position dependent, being directly correlated to the local contact pressure at the interface. In addition, the current applications and future directions of the finite element modeling (FEM) of the metal cutting process are summarized.