Temperature and wear analysis in milling of aerospace grade aluminum alloy Al-7050

Temperature and wear analyses in the milling of aerospace grade aluminum Al-7050 are presented. After briefly introducing the mechanics of milling in the side and bottom cutting edges of the tools, thermal analysis is presented by considering shearing and frictional heat generations in the primary and secondary zones. Temperature fields on the tool are predicted based on a pre-developed computational analysis based on finite difference techniques. An experimental investigation is performed to determine the flank wear amount based on the predicted maximum temperature and hardness of tools in milling of Al-7050 with carbide tools with various cobalt binding concentrations. The analysis clearly shows that the cobalt concentration of the tungsten carbide tools has a strong effect on the tool flank wear in the machining of aluminum alloy Al-7050.