Enhancement of chatter stability in milling using passive damping techniques

Abstract

Milling is a popular method of machining employed in the manufacturing industry for realizing a range of complicated features on the workpiece by removing excess material. Thin wall milling is a commonly used process in the aircraft industries to machine components such as aircraft wings, jet engine compressors, fuselage sections, turbine blades, etc. One of the most difficult operations in the aerospace industry is the thin-wall milling of flexible plate-like structures made of aluminium and titanium alloys. Chatter is a sort of self-excited vibration that imposes a most significant constraint on productivity. It results in poor surface finish, as well as damage to the cutter and machine tool. Machining stability is critical for enhancing machine tool performance and quality. Hence, many researchers incessantly put in their efforts to improve machining stability by developing various techniques and processes to reduce and control chatter. In thin wall milling, these techniques focus on improving workpiece side dynamic stability, while machine tool side stability is improved when the rigidity of the workpieces is higher. In this research work, an attempt is made to enhance the stability of both of the above cases by using passive damping techniques to achieve better surface finish and productivity by mitigating chatter. newline