Strojniški vestnik - Journal of Mechanical Engineering 61(2015)2, 131-137 © 2015 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved. D0l:10.5545/sv-jme.2014.1897 Original Scientific Paper Received for review: 2014-04-17 Received revised form: 2014-07-29 Accepted for publication: 2014-10-17 Effect of Initial Residual Stress and Machining-Induced Residual Stress on the Deformation of Aluminium Alloy Plate Xiaoming Huang1 - Jie Sun12* - Jianfeng Li12 1 Shandong University, School of Mechanical Engineering, China 2 Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of High Efficiency and Clean Mechanical Manufacture, China During the machining of aerospace thin-walled components, a large amount material is removed, and machining-induced residual stress is induced in the boundary layer of the work piece, which results in deformation of the components. In this study, the effects of material initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress on the deformation of aluminium alloy plate are studied. A theoretical model of the plate is analysed first, and the experiments of the milling deformation under different initial residual stress conditions are performed. The results show that the machining-induced residual stress is the primary factor of distortion. The coupling action of compressive initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress increase the plate deformation, and the coupling action of tensile initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress decrease the plate deformation. The finite element simulation results are compared with experimental results and found to be in good agreement. Keywords: thin walls, machining distortion, residual stress, chemical milling Highlights • Machining deformation mechanism of plate was studied. • Analysis of deformation factors weights. • The effect of the plate initial residual stress on the magnitude of the deformation. • Studied the relationships between the maximum deflection and the thickness of the specimens. 0 INTRODUCTION With increasing demand for the improvement of airplane performance, large monolithic components are widely used in order to reduce airplane weight in the aviation industry [1]. During the machining process of structural components, up to 90% of the material is removed from the blank. For those components, it is easy to cause substantial distortion because of the initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress. Aircraft parts are typically machined from pre-stretched 7050-T7451 aluminium alloys. In order to reduce the initial residual stresses and increase mechanical strength, pre-treatments are performed in producing blank plates, i.e. quenching, extrusions, stretching, etc. [2] and [3]. However, it is difficult to eliminate the initial stress. Machining-induced residual stress is produced on the machined surface of the work piece due to the action of machining. In order to control the thin-walled component deformation, some investigations have been done. Rai and Xirouchakis studied the milling thin-walled component distortion based on an FEM machining environment [4]. An FEM method called "housebuilding frame modelling" was used to predict the milling distortion of monolithic aero-component under different milling conditions [5]. For this study, machining loads were used to replace the machining-induced residual stresses, and initial residual stresses were ignored. This assumption is inappropriate for the actual situation. Assuming that stresses induced by the machining process were negligible, Sun and Ke studied the influence of initial residual stress on the machining distortion of large unitization airframes [6]. Huang et al. investigated the effects of the milling process sequence on the deformation of frame monolithic components by establishing cutting force fields and temperature fields [7]. Moreover, some studies on monolithic component deformation were focussed on surface dimensional error caused by machining load and clamping force [8] and [9]. Although some studies have been done to analyse the machining distortion, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on the cause and primary effect element of machining distortion of thin-walled components. The joint action of initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stresses on thin-walled component deformation has not been fully explored, and fundamental research is required to understand how machining distortion develops. In this paper, machining residual stress is induced by the high-speed milling thin-walled plates of *Corr. Author's Address: Shandong University, School of Mechanical Engineering, No.17923 Jingshi Road, China, hxm2552@163.com 131 Strojniski vestnik - Journal of Mechanical Engineering 61(2015)2, 131-137 different locations in 60 mm thick 7050-T7451 plates, which are used to explore the effect of machining-induced residual stress and blank initial residual stress for deformation. In order to avoid introducing additional stress, chemical milling experiments are conducted to thin the specimens gradually. 1 THEORETICAL ANALYSIS MODEL For a simple rectangular block, there are only longitudinal residual stresses in the transverse directions along the thickness, as shown in Fig. 1. It is assumed that the material is removed without creating residual stresses at the exposed material surface [10]. Because there are no external forces acting on the plate, all forces and bending moment acting over any cross-section of the plate must be in equilibrium before and after the materials were removed: JadA = 0, J dM = 0. (1) The relationship between the moment and curvature change is given by [6]: 1 1 6SSmaj1 = rvff \3' (2) Pm Pm+1 E(°m+l) Sm = humE(—---—). Pm Pm+\ (4) Fig. 1. Initial residual stress and additional stresses after the removal of materials Referring to Fig. 1, hum + hlm = Sm+U Sm ' = h / hum )Sm, Utilizing Eqs. (2) through (6), h _ Sm+i(3Sm +8m+i) um r 0 6o„ (5) (6) (7) where, pm / pm+1 are radii of curvatures of the mid-section of the remaining body, before and after removal of the mth layer; 8 is the thickness of the removed layer; 8m and 8m+1 are the height of the body before and after the removal of the mth layer; E is Young's modulus, and j is the residual stress of the mth layer before it is removed. Since the distribution of the residual stress in the remaining body is changed due to the removal of the mth layer, the curvature change resulting from the removal of the (m+1)th layer will be a function of the new state of residual stress as opposed to the original state of residual stress. The shaded triangle shown in Fig. 1 represents the stress state in the block that is created by bringing the remaining body back to its equilibrium state. hSm hmSm = 0, j = m -1, (3) where, hum and hlm are the height from the neutral axis to the upper and bottom surface of the remaining body, Sm and Sm' are stresses that are produced at the upper and bottom surfaces of the remaining body. The relationship between the stress Sm and the curvature change caused by the removal of the mth layer can be expressed as: In order to compute the stress j the correction terms accounting for the removals of the first layer through the mth layer should be calculated. For computing the correction terms, the stress, Sk for 1 < k I > IV > II. Specimen IV's deformation is considered to be caused by machining-induced residual stress, mostly because of its location and the initial residual stress profile. For Plates I and III, the coupling effect of tensile initial residual stress and machining-induced residual stress increases the deformation compared with Plate IV. For Plate II, the coupling effect of the compressive initial residual stress and the machining-induced residual stress decrease the deformation, in comparison with Plate IV. 134 Huang, X. - Sun, J. - Li, J. Strojniški vestnik - Journal of Mechanical Engineering 61(2015)2, 131-137 The relationships of the maximum deflection and the thickness of the four specimens are shown in Fig. 6. As can be seen, the non-linear deformation increases gradually when the materials are removed from one side. The residual stress has a significant impact on the deformation of plates of different thicknesses. This 1.75 mm plate is 2.3 times the thickness of that 0.75 mm one, and the 0.75 mm plate deformation is approximately 9.8 times that of the 1.75 mm plate deformation. According to the curve of Fig. 6, the curve slopes at different thickness are calculated and listed in Table 5. Deformation differentiation of the four plates is not significant when the thickness is more than 1.5 mm. When the thickness is less than 1.25 mm, the machining-induced residual stress has a greater effect on the plate deformation. Fig. 6. 2,00 1,75 1,50 1,25 1,00 0,75 Thickness of plating [mm] The relationship of max deformation and thin-walled plate thickness The max displacements of the four specimens are 0.151, 0.112, 0.165 and 0.134 mm when the thickness is 0.75 mm. The influence of the initial stress on deformation is (0.165-0.112) mm = 0.053 mm, which accounts for about one third of the total deformation. Machining-induced residual stress is the primary effect element of machining distortion for the 0.75 mm thick aluminium alloy plate. Table 5. Deformation slope at different thicknesses Plate thickness [mm] 1.75 1.5 1.25 1.0 0.75 I 0.048 0.051 0.010 0.247 0.350 II 0.041 0.045 0.107 0.154 0.213 III 0.057 0.057 0.121 0.277 0.393 IV 0.045 0.048 0.103 0.175 0.218 4 FEM SIMULATION Finite element simulation of machining distortion is performed using the ABAQUS commercial finite element software. The size of the thin-walled plate is the same as that of the experimental specimen (140^50x2 mm). The model was meshed with the C3D8R element, with a total of 1120 elements and 1512 nodes. The residual stress curve from Fig. 2b is dispersed, and the corresponding value of the residual stress at each position was assumed to act uniformly through the thickness of the thin-wall plate, as shown in Fig. 2b. The initial residual stress of every plate is applied to the finite element model using the corresponding node command in FEM. The arithmetic mean stress ( I > IV > II. The order of max Mises stress is III > I > IV > II, which is the same as the deflection order. The maximum deformation of the FEM simulation, as well as analytical and experiments results are shown in Fig. 9. As can be seen, the theoretical calculation result has good agreement with the FEM. The maximum margin of error between FEM and analytical value was 7.9%. The experimental values are less than the FEM results. There are some error factors producing the difference between FEM and experimental results: machining-induced residual stress has uniform distribution because of the milling tool-path; measurement precision; calculation error, etc. The maximal error is 29.8%, which is in the acceptable range. 0.75 mm thin-walled plate Fig. 9. The max deformation of FEM analytical and experiments results 5 CONCLUSIONS The effects of material initial residual stresses and machining-induced residual stresses on the deformation of aluminium alloy plate are studied. The thin-walled specimens appeared convex and bending distortion, and machining induced residual stress result in the machined side facing up. The machining-induced residual stress is the primary cause of plate deformation. The location of the plate has some effect on the magnitude of the deformation. Compared with the near center plate, the deformation is greater when the plate is in the tensile residual stress zone of the blank, and the deformation is lesser when the plates are in the compressive residual stress zone of the blank. The relationships of the maximum deflection and the thickness of the specimens are studied, and the results 136 Huang, X. - Sun, J. - Li, J. Strojniški vestnik - Journal of Mechanical Engineering 61(2015)2, 131-137 show that the machining-induced residual stress has a greater effect on the plate deformation when the thickness is below than 1.25 mm. The tendency of FEM deformation is consistent with the experiment results, and the values are greater than the measurement values. As the materials are removed, the max Mises stress decreased almost linearly. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors want to thank for the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51275277). 7 REFERENCES [1] Megson, T.H.G. (2012). Aircraft Structures for Engineering Students. Leeds University, Leeds. [2] Li, P.Y., Xiong B.Q., Zhang, Y.A., Li, Z.H. (2012). Temperature variation and solution treatment of high strength AA7050. Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China, vol. 22, no. 3, p. 546-554, D0l:10.1016/S1003-6326(11)61212-0. [3] Burtchen, M., Hunkel, M., Lubben, Th., Hoffmann, F., Zoch, H.W. (2009). 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