Ultrasonic cutting of aerospace difficult-to-cut alloys: Current status and prospects

Titanium alloys, superalloy, high-strength steels and other difficult-to-cut alloys have excellent mechanical properties and are extensively utilized in important fields like aerospace, military industry, automobiles, and national security. Cutting is an important way to achieve the forming and manufacturing of difficult-to-cut alloys, but conventional cutting (CC) machining often encounters issues like large cutting force, high cutting temperature, severe tool wear, and poor machining surface integrity, which bring great challenges to the machining process. Ultrasonic vibration assisted cutting (UVAC) is one of the key technologies for machining difficult-to-cut alloys accurately and efficiently. Taking difficult-to-cut alloys as the research object, this paper summarizes the application and mechanism of UVAC technology in these metal materials. Finally, the problems and challenges in UVAC of metal materials are prospected.