Investigation on feasibility of recurrence quantification analysis for detecting flank wear in face milling

Abstract

Flank wear is a critical phenomenon which has direct impact on quality of surface finish, dimensional precision and ultimately cost of the finished product. In any metal cutting operation, cutting tool wear estimation will help in identifying tool state, which is a critical factor in productivity. In this paper, the vibration signals are used for detecting flank wear in face milling .The vibration signals are analyzed using a novel non linear technique called recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). RQA includes time delay and dimensions embedding process so as to reconstruct the time series data of vibration signal, to obtain better information of the changes in nonlinear dynamics underlying the milling process. An investigation of this technique was carried out to see its capability in detecting flank wear in face milling. Experiments were conducted on universal milling machine using AISI H11 steel as work material. The investigation proved that RQA technique has a good potential in detecting flank wear in face milling. The RQA parameters such as percent recurrence (REC), trapping time (TT), percent laminarity (LAM) and entropy (ENT), and also the recurrence plots color patterns for different flank wear, can be used in detecting insert wear in face milling. Keywords: milling, flank wear, recurrence plot, recurrence quantification analysis.