MACHINABILITY ANALYSIS OF ALUMINUM-CAST IRON (AlSi-GCI) BIMETALLIC COMPONENTS THROUGH EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDIES

Abstract

This thesis includes experimental and numerical investigations to study the machinability of the dry finish turning of an AlSi-GCI (JIS ADC 12- ASTM A48 class 40) bimetallic workpiece with CBN cutting tools by studying tool life, wear behaviour, cutting forces, and workpiece surface roughness. This involved the development of a novel experimental setup that captured the fluctuating cutting forces associated with bimetal parts on the cutting tool. In addition, a numerical finite element method (FEM) model was also developed to investigate the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the CBN cutting tool and simulate the bimetal turning process under different cutting conditions. Finally, a study to reduce the cutting forces was conducted using Taguchi’s design of experiment (DOE) approach, which was studied numerically with FEM and validated experimentally. This was done to serve as a model approach that can be applied to study unique machining conditions in the future. The findings of the machinability study comparing two different tool geometries are presented along with the results of the machinability improvement study.