Modelling Sawing of Metal Tubes Through FEM Simulation

The paper presents the development of a numerical model of the sawing process of AISI 304 thin tubes, which is cut through a circular blade with alternating roughing and finishing teeth. The numerical simulation environment is the three-dimensional FEM software DeformTM v.10.1. The teeth actual trajectories were determined by a blade kinematics analysis developed in MatlabTM. Due to the manufacturing rolling steps and subsequent welding stage, the tube material is characterized by a gradient of properties along its thickness. Consequently, a simplified cutting test was set up and carried out in order to identify the values of relevant material parameters to be used in the numerical model. The dedicated test was the Orthogonal Tube Cutting test (OTC), which was performed on an instrumented lathe. The proposed numerical model was validated by comparing numerical results and experimental data obtained from sawing tests carried out on an industrial machine. The following outputs were compared: the cutting force, the chip thickness, and the chip contact area.