Prediction of specific energy consumption during face milling of steel

A novel empirical equation is presented to evaluate the Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) in face milling of steel. The proposed approach introduces a corrective factor to estimate the softening of work materials due to thermal effects at large cutting velocity. An experimental campaign on AISI 304 was carried out to investigate the predictive capability of the proposed model. A complete design matrix varying cutting velocity, radial depth of cut and feed rate was performed while measuring the average power consumed as response variable. Experimental results show that SEC reaches a maximum with the increase in the cutting speed. It is demonstrated that the SEC reduction observed at high cutting speeds is due to thermal softening induced by the higher temperatures attained in the work material. The formula proposed aims at providing a simple and accurate expression to select the process parameters in an energy saving perspective, especially in high-speed milling.