Numerical validation of cutting simulations for complex heat exchangers using 3D reverse engineered surfaces

Due to it's cost effectiveness and flexibility machining is widely regarded as the backbone of manufacturing. To ensure the aforementioned features of this method, the tooling and process must be configured to suit the material. In literature many publications have analyzed and simulated a two-dimensional (orthogonal) cutting process to this end. This simplification has been proven to be effective and enables predictions for a continuous cut. For the interrupted cut at the heart of our research this approach is not valid and three-dimensional cutting simulations are necessary. Due to the computational complexity involved few publications exist in this area. In this study an Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) scheme is employed using the commercial solver LS-DYNA. To validate the results and determine our model parameters, an inverse method is proposed which uses the digitized surface of manufactured samples. The predicted structure from the simulation was found to be in excellent agreement with the measurements and the model can be used to reduce the need for empirical tests.
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