A new hypothesis of steady-state flank wear progression of cutting tools with similar geometry and its verification

A new hypothesis is proposed and verified in this study to clarify the relationship between the progression and the mechanism of the flank wear of cutting tools in the steady-state region, assuming that the flank wear part expands while maintaining a geometrically similar profile. Based on Preston's law, the proposed hypothesis analytically leads to the conclusions that in the steady-state wear region where the cutting temperature is low and the abrasive wear is dominant, the flank wear width increases linearly, and the normal stress on the flank wear part does not change. Furthermore, this hypothesis suggests that the nonlinear and faster wear progression in the initial wear region is caused by an unsteady transition in the flank wear profile. Cutting experiments were conducted using tungsten carbide tools and carbon steel workpieces. The results demonstrated that the flank wear part expands with a certain similarity profile in the steady-state wear region. The normal stress distribution on the flank wear part was estimated from the similarity profile based on the proposed hypothesis, and the result was in rough agreement with that calculated by the finite element method in the literature.