Burr formation and correlation with cutting force and acoustic emission signals

The principle objective of this work is to present a methodology to evaluate the correlation between burr size attributes (thickness and height) and information computed from acoustic emission and cutting forces signals. In the proposed methodology, cutting force and acoustic emission signals were recorded in each cutting test, and each recorded original acoustic emission signal was segmented into two sections that correspond to steady-state cutting process (cutting signal) and cutting tool exit from the work part (exit signal). The dominant acoustic emission signal parameters including AEmax and AErms were computed from each segmented acoustic emission signal. The maximum values of directional cutting forces (FX, FY and FZ) were also measured in each trial. The experimental verification was conducted on slot milling operation which has relatively more complicated burr formation mechanism than that in many other traditional machining operations. Among slot milling burrs, the top-up milling side burrs and exit burrs along up milling side were largest and thickest burrs which were studied in this work. To evaluate the correlation between signal information and burr size, the computed signal information (5 parameters) and their interaction effects (10 parameters) were used to construct the input parameters of the multiple regression fitted models. Statistical methods were then used to assess the adequacy of individual input parameters and signal information. Using the acoustic emission and cutting force signals information in the input layer of multiple regression models, a high correlation was observed between the predicted and observed values of burr size. It was exhibited that due to complex burr formation mechanism in milling operation and strong interaction effects between cutting process parameters, no systematic relationship can be formulated between the milling burrs.