Z-map based cutting force prediction for elliptical ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling process

Elliptical ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling (EUVAM) adds high-frequency vibration to conventional milling (CM) to realize high-frequency intermittent milling. It has broad application prospects in the processing of difficult-to-cut materials such as titanium alloys, superalloys, and hard and brittle materials. To reveal the mechanism of the highly intermittent cutting nature in EUVAM, according to the motion relationship between the cutting edge and the workpiece and the Z-map representation of the workpiece, a method and its algorithm for calculating the undeformed cutting thickness and thus the cutting force in EUVAM are proposed. The simulation results show that EUVAM can improve the actual cutting speed when compared with CM, and the proportion of idle cutting time will directly determine the intermittent degree of the milling process. The experiment of EUVAM is performed to verify the correctness of the proposed cutting force model, and the impact of spindle speed on the cutting force in EUVAM is also analyzed. It is shown that UEVAM can reduce the cutting force by up to 50% under appropriate cutting conditions.