On ductile-regime elliptical vibration cutting of silicon with identifying the lower bound of practicable nominal cutting velocity

This study investigates the ductile-to-brittle transition behavior in elliptical vibration cutting (EVC) of silicon and identifies the practical process window for ductile-regime cutting. EVC has been reported to increase the critical depth of ductile-regime cutting of silicon. This study demonstrates that the enhanced ductile cutting performance, however, is only optimal in a carefully-determined process window. The vibration amplitudes and nominal cutting velocity have significant impacts on the ductile-to-brittle transition behaviors. Systematic experiments covering a wide span of vibration amplitudes and cutting velocity have been conducted to investigate their effects. Two quantitative performance indices, the critical depth and ductile ratio, are utilized to analyze cutting performance by considering two unique characteristics of elliptical vibration cutting, i.e., the time-varying undeformed chip thickness and effective cutting direction angle. The results show that there exists a lower bound for the nominal cutting velocity to ensure the ductile-regime material removal, besides the well-known upper bound. Besides, the increases of vibration amplitudes in both the cutting and depth-of-cut (DOC) directions first enhance but then deteriorate the cutting performance. Based on the theoretical analysis and experimental results, the optimal process parameters have been recommended for the elliptical vibration cutting of silicon.