Direct observations of tribological behavior in cutting with textured cutting tools

As widely reported in the literature, the micro-texturing technique has a significant potential to improve the performance of cutting tools by reducing cutting forces, friction, temperature, and tool wear, and further, by improving tribological behavior at the tool-chip and tool-workpiece interface. However, it is also known that the effects of textures on the cutting tool surface strongly depend on the texture geometry and dimensions, and that the application of indiscriminate surface textures to cutting tools often results in adverse effects on cutting performance, indicating that an improved understanding of surface phenomena is required to further develop textured cutting tools. This paper summarizes recent advances in tool surface texturing in metal cutting fields, and continues to describe how the textured surface of a cutting tool influences the deformation fields of the workpiece material, including both primary and secondary shear zones, by means of direct in-situ observation using particle image velocimetry analysis to understand the behavior in the vicinity of the textured surfaces during the cutting process. The experimental results with the textured cutting tool reveal that the effect of the grooved rake face on the cutting force differs depending on the relative position of the microgroove with respect to the undeformed chip thickness. The friction condition and where the texture is located determine the performance of the surface texture. The link between the interface friction and chip flow mode is discussed, and it is demonstrated that surface textures can alter the chip flow mode from a segmented flow with redundant deformation to a steadier homogeneous flow with lower cutting energy.