Formation mechanism of lamellar chips during machining of bulk metallic glass
M.Q. Jiang, L.H. Dai *
State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Received 27 November 2008; received in revised form 19 February 2009; accepted 19 February 2009 Available online 28 March 2009
Abstract
The unique lamellar chips formed in turning–machining of a Vit 1 bulk metallic glass (BMG) are found to be due to repeated shearband formation in the primary shear zone (PSZ). A coupled thermomechanical orthogonal cutting model, taking into account force, free volume and energy balance in the PSZ, is developed to quantitatively characterize lamellar chip formation. Its onset criterion is revealed through a linear perturbation analysis. Lamellar chip formation is understood as a self-sustained limit-cycle phenomenon: there is autonomous feedback in stress, free volume and temperature in the PSZ. The underlying mechanism is the symmetry breaking of free volumef low and source, rather than thermal instability. These results are fundamentally useful for machining BMGs and even for understanding the physical nature of inhomogeneous flow in BMGs.