Investigation on cutting forces in ultrasonic vibration assisted milling of particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites (PTMCs)

Particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites are widely used in aerospace and marine fields because of their excellent performance. However, the difficulty of machining is increased by the existence of highly brittle and hard reinforcing particles dispersed in the matrix. To address the challenges of the difficulty of subsequent processing of particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites, an ultrasonic vibration-assisted process is used for milling. In this paper, an orthogonal cutting simulation model of particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites’ material is established by ABAQUS software, and the constitutive material models of particles and metallic matrix are established respectively. The excellent performance of ultrasonic vibration assisted cutting is dynamically analyzed from the simulation micro angle. Meanwhile, combined with the conventional milling and ultrasonic vibration assisted cutting experiments, the influence of the two processing methods on the cutting performance of grain-reinforced titanium matrix composite material is compared. The results show that, compared with conventional milling, the intermittent cutting mode of ultrasonic vibration-assisted cutting can significantly reduce the cutting force by about 10%; in both cutting modes, with the same cutting conditions, the change in cutting force is positively correlated with the cutting speed, feed per tooth, and cutting width.