Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of AFM-based nanometric cutting of some single-crystal cubic metals

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of AFM-based nanometric cutting have been carried out on some single-crystal cubic metals, both FCC (Al, Cu, and Ni) and BCC (FCC) to investigate the effect of ductility of metal material on the nature of deformation during the nanometric cutting process. The Morse potential was utilized to compute both the interactions between workpiece atoms, interactions between workpiece atoms and tool atoms. Chip formation, workpiece deformation region, and system potential energy variation were observed. The results reveal that the AFM-based nanometric cutting process is significantly affected by the ductility of single-crystal metal material.