Cutting Force/Temperature Multicriteria Optimization for a Milling Process

High cutting forces and temperatures are detrimental to an endmill. Increments in the force magnitudes can cause the workpiece to deflect, bringing about irregular cutting and low-quality surface finish as a result of chatter vibrations. On the other hand, excessive cutting temperatures increase tool wear and also a diminished workpiece surface finishing. It was found that cutting force and temperature are affected by endmill’s rake, helix, relief, and clearance angles amongst other endmill shape parameters. This raises interest in finding the best endmill shape that simultaneously brings about reductions in both cutting force and temperature. Thus, this work focuses on endmill shape optimization for effective machining. To do this, first the endmill shape is generated and meshed using the four referenced shape parameters in matlab. Then, a milling process is run using an automated Abaqus finite element method simulation coupled to a Particle Swarm Optimization process that uses cutting force and temperature as criteria for optimization. Unlike in usual Abaqus based optimization studies, which use Abaqus input file identifiers as optimization variables, in this study, the endmill’s design and shape generation, mesh discretization, and subsequently, the processing of simulation results are all done using matlab scripting, without recourse to the Abaqus Graphic User Interface. Abaqus CAE is only called to run the cutting simulation. The optimization objective is to find the combination of the endmill geometric parameters that would bring about the lowest maximum cutting force and cutting temperature. Multicriteria optimization results are shown to demonstrate the predicted improvements.