Microstructure Effects on Cutting Forces and Flow Stress in Ultra-Precision Machining of Polycrystalline Brittle Materials

Abstract

This paper presents a physics-based analysis to quantitatively describe the effects of grain size, grain boundaries, and crystallographic orientation on the flow stress of the polycrystalline material and thereby on the cutting and thrust forces. The model has been experimentally validated, in terms of the force intensities and sensitivities to microstructure attributes such as the grain size and the misorientation by comparing the forces to measured data in micromachining of polycrystalline silicon carbide (p-SiC). Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to explore the effects of grain boundaries and misorientation and to validate the modeling analysis in the context of resulting force ratios.