Experimentally Aided Operational Virtual Prototyping to Predict Best Clamping Conditions for Face Milling of Large-Size Structures

Vibrations occurring during milling operations are one of the main issues disturbing the pursuit of better efficiency of milling operations and product quality. Even in the case of a stable cutting process, vibration reduction is still an important goal. One of the possible solutions to obtain it is selection of the favorable conditions for clamping the workpiece to the machine table. In this paper, a method for predicting and selecting the clamping condition of a large-size workpiece for the reduction in vibrations during milling is presented. A modal test of the workpiece is performed first for a selected set of tightening screw settings. Next, one milling pass is performed to obtain reference data which are then used to tune the hybrid computational model. In the subsequent step, milling simulations are performed for a set of tightening variants, and the best one is selected, providing the lowest vibrations, assessed as the root mean square (RMS) of vibration displacements. In this paper, the description of the clamping selection procedure, key elements of the simulation model, and simulation and experimental results obtained for the milling of the test workpiece performed for a set of different clamping conditions are provided. The proposed method accurately predicts not only the best but also the worst clamping conditions.