Manufacturing Simulation Using Finite Element - Finite Element Analysis for Satellite Structures - page 303

Fig. 7.28 Finite element model of the end mill tool

Fig. 7.29 Finite element
model of the holder

size. This requires adding virtual mass and rotation inertia to the 2D meshed
model, as they affect the magnitude of force applied by the tool teeth on the work
piece. Here, the tool is meshed with coarse (3 mm) C3D10 M explicit elements,
except the part in contact with the work piece is meshed with 0.2 mm size ele-
ments. If the reader is interested in studying the forces and tool fatigue life, it is
recommended to use more dense mesh. Increasing the number of elements of the
tool does not affect the modeling technique to be discussed in this section, only
requires more powerful pc. The meshed model of the tool is shown in Fig. 7.28 .
The holder is also modeled as a rigid body using second reference point, and
meshed with coarse mesh (1.5 mm element size). The function of the holder is to
model the fixation of the work piece on the milling machine. The meshed model of
the holder is shown in Fig. 7.29 .
The work piece is modeled as a deformable body, and divided into two parts.
The part to be machined with the end mill cutting tool is meshed with 0.2 mm
C3D8R explicit elements, while the other part is meshed with 1 mm size elements.
The depth of the part with dense mesh is double the cut depth. The work piece
faces in contact with the holder are partitioned to create matching areas for the
opposite ones on the holder. These partitions are to make the constraint or contact
surface to be defined between the holder and the work piece more effective. The
contact with the end mill cutting tool is defined as follows,