An investigation of heat partition and tool wear in hard turning of H13 tool steel with CBN cutting tools

This paper presents results of an investigation into the tool life and the tool wear behaviour of low content CBN cutting tools used in hard turning of hardened H13 tool steel. The approach followed here required both experimental work and finite element thermal modelling. The experiments involved measuring the cutting forces, cutting temperatures, tool wear, and the contact area. Using the measured cutting forces and the contact area in the orthogonal cutting model, we calculated the heat flux on the tool and applied it in the FE thermal analysis. The temperatures history from the analysis was matched with the experimental data to estimate the fraction of heat entering the tool for both conventional and high speeds. The heat partition into the tool was estimated to be around 21-22% for conventional speeds, whereas for high-speed turning, it was around 14%. The tool wear, however, was found to be dominated by chipping for both cutting speeds and could be reduced considerably by reducing the amount of heat entering the tool.