Definition of a Non-contact Induction Heating of a Cutting Tool as a Substitute for the Process Heat for the Verification of a Thermal Simulation Model

Abstract

During metal machining, a large amount of heat is generated in the cutting zone, which has a negative impact on machining accuracy due to the thermal expansion of the materials. To reduce the temperature in the cutting zone, liquid coolants are used which increase the costs and can have a negative impact on the environment. This problem is being studied using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to better understand the behavior of the coolant flow in the cutting zone, which will allow optimization of the use of liquid coolants and the development of a correction method for thermal errors, resulting in more accurate machining with reduced resource and environmental footprints. However, due to the complexity of multiphase CFD simulations, the simulation model must be simplified as much as possible. This is particularly important for the process heat generation, as combining flow simulation of coolant flow around the rotating cutting tool with structural simulation of the milling process, including chip formation, would require excessive computational power. In following paper an alternative method of tool heating by electromagnetic induction is presented and the measurement dependencies required to determine the heat flux induced into the cutting tool are described. This can be further applied as a boundary condition for the numerical simulation as a verification method for the coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction FSI simulation model of the thermally induced deformations of the cutting tool and its holder.