Research on Cutting Performance in High-speed Milling of TC11 Titanium Alloy Using Self-propelled Rotary Milling Cutters

Titanium alloy materials, with excellent chemical and physical properties, are widely applied to the manufacture of key components in the aerospace industry. Nevertheless, its hard-to-machine characteristic causes various problems in the machining process, such as severe tool wear, difficulty to ensure good surface quality, etc. To achieve high efficiency and quality of machining titanium alloy materials, this paper conducted an experimental research on the high-speed milling of TC11 titanium alloy with self-propelled rotary milling cutters. In the work, the wear mechanism of self-propelled rotary milling cutters was explored, the influence of milling velocity was analyzed on the cutting process, and the variation laws were obtained of milling forces, chip morphology and machined surface quality with the milling length. The results showed that in the early and middle stages of milling, the insert coating peeled off evenly under the joint action of abrasive and adhesive wear mechanisms. As the milling length increased, the dense notches occurred on the cutting edge of the cutter, the wear mechanism converted gradually into fatigue wear, and furthermore coating started peeling off the cutting edge with the occurrence of thermal fatigue cracks on the insert. As the milling length was further extended, the milling forces tended to intensify, the chip deformation worsened, and the obvious cracks occurred at the bottom of chips. Moreover, the rise in milling velocity reduced the tool wear resistance, increased obviously the milling forces and the surface roughness.

Effect of Laser Shock Peening on Fretting Fatigue Life of TC11 Titanium Alloy

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of laser shock peening (LSP) subjected to fretting fatigue with TC11 titanium alloy specimens and pads. Three laser power densities (3.2 GW/cm2, 4.8 GW/cm2 and 6.4 GW/cm2) of LSP were chosen and tested using manufactured fretting fatigue apparatus. The experimental results show that the LSP surface treatment significantly improves the fretting fatigue lives of the fretting specimens, and the fretting fatigue life increases most when the laser power density is 4.8 GW/cm2. It is also found that with the increase of the laser power density, the fatigue crack initiation location tends to move from the surface to the interior of the specimen.

Identification of Deformation Stage and Crack Initiation in TC11 Alloys Using Acoustic Emission

The Acoustic Emission (AE) is a widely used real-time monitoring technique for the deformation damage and crack initiation of areo-engine blades. In this work, a tensile test for TC11 titanium alloy, one of the main materials of aero-engine, was performed. The AE signals from different stages of this test were collected. Then, the AE signals were decomposed by the Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) method, in which the signals were divided into two different frequency bands. We calculated the engery ratio by dividing the two different frequency bands to characterize TC11′s degree of deformation. The results showed that when the energy ratio was −0.5 dB, four stages of deformation damage of the TC11 titanium alloy could be clearly identified. We further combined the calculated Partial Energy Ratio (PER) and Weighted Peak Frequency (WPF) to identify the crack initiation of the TC11 titanium alloy. The results showed that the identification accuracy was 96.33%.