Influence of material microstructure changes on surface integrity in hard machining of AISI 52100 steel

Residual stresses are a consequence of thermo-mechanical and microstructural phenomena generated during the machining operation. Therefore, for improving product performance in machined hardened steels, material microstructure changes (commonly referred to as white and dark layers) must be taken into account. This paper presents a finite element model for white and dark layers formation in orthogonal machining of hardened AISI 52100 steel. In particular, a hardness-based flow stress and empirical models for describing the white and dark layers formation were developed and implemented in the finite element code. A series of experiments was carried out in order to validate the proposed simulation strategy and to investigate the influence of material microstructure changes on residual stresses. As main results, it was firstly demonstrated by surface topography analysis as both the white and dark layer are the result of microstructural alterations mainly due to rapid heating and quenching. Furthermore, it was found as both the presence of white and dark layers influence the residual stress profile. Particularly, the former significant impacts on the magnitude of maximum residual stress and on the location of the peak compressive residual stress; the latter reduces the compressive area.