Surface Integrity Investigations and its Effect on the Fatigue Life in Laser Assisted Machining of TC6 Titanium Alloy
摘要
In this study, the systematic experiments both conventional machining (CM) and laser assisted machining (LAM) of TC6 titanium alloy were conducted, and the evolution rule of the surface integrity of TC6 titanium alloy is also compared and analyzed. The results show that the surface roughness of LAM is reduced by 10%, 9% and 4% compared with CM, respectively. At low cutting speed, the hardness distribution of LAM and CM is more dispersed. With the increase of cutting speed, the hardness distribution of LAM gradually tends to be consistent with that of CM. The residual stress of CM decreases with the increase of cutting speed, while the residual stress of LAM has a tendency to residual tensile stress. The grain size of TC6 titanium alloy from surface becomes larger with an assistance of laser, resulting in a crystal slipping along the cutting direction. In addition, the evolution of fatigue life under different processing methods was elucidated based on the low cycle fatigue experiments, and the fracture morphology was observed by SEM to analyze the fracture mechanism of TC6 titanium alloy. The fatigue life under specific cutting parameters in LAM is lower than that of CM, and the fatigue life is reduced by 24% at low cutting speed. The main reason is attributed to the transformation state of residual compressive stress to tensile stress. The results of the morphological characteristics of fracture revealed that the fracture mode undergoes from quasi-cleavage fracture to ductile fracture in LAM. When the cutting speed is 65 m/min, small dimples appear inside the large dimples, accompanied by small particles.