Titanium alloys are commonly used in industrial applications due to their exceptional mechanical and chemical properties. However, their low thermal conductivity and high chemical reactivity pose significant challenges in machining, leading to increased cutting forces, rapid tool wear, and poor surface quality. To overcome these issues, advanced cutting edge preparation techniques have been developed to enhance the machining performance of titanium alloys. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art cutting edge preparation techniques for titanium alloy machining and examines their effects on machining performance. It first presents a characterization method for cutting edge geometry and explores how it affects machining performance, demonstrating that strategic cutting edge preparation can significantly enhance performance by reducing cutting forces and improving surface finish. The paper also emphasizes the underlying mechanisms of cutting edge preparation and its impact on machining performance and subsequent cutting edge erosion. Finally, it concludes by discussing future research directions in this field, highlighting the need to develop new cutting edge preparation techniques and optimize existing ones. Overall, this paper serves as a valuable resource for researchers and engineers seeking to improve the cutting performance of titanium alloys in various applications.

In this work, the generalized finite difference method (GFDM), a popular meshless numerical method, is employed for predicting the thermal and mechanical behavior of an electrothermal micro-actuator. Based on the concept of GFDM and discretization on the computational domain, the discrete forms of the thermal and mechanical governing equations are derived, respectively. With the help of the incremental load method, the discrete form from the electrothermal analysis is solved precisely and the temperature distribution is obtained. Meanwhile, combining this approach with the discrete control equation derived from the natural boundary condition, its displacement is also evaluated. The convergence of the temperature by different iterative methods is tested and compared. The computational stability and efficiency (CPU time) in these two analyses are also given in this study. To further investigate the accuracy of the solutions, experiments to capture temperature and FEM analysis are conducted. Regardless of the imperfect boundary condition, the temperature distribution calculated by the GFDM shows great agreement with that obtained by experiment and FEM. A similar phenomenon can be also found in the comparison between the displacements evaluated by the GFDM and FEM, respectively.

Reaction-Bonded Silicon Carbide (RB-SiC) ceramics possessing excellent mechanical and chemical properties, whose surface integrities have an essential effect on their performance and service life, have been widely used as substrates in the core parts of aerospace, optics and semiconductors industries. The single abrasive scratching test is considered as the effective way to provide the fundamental material removal mechanisms in the abrasive lapping and polishing of RB-SiC ceramics for the best surface finish. In this study, a novel single abrasive scratching test with an increasing scratching depth has been properly designed to represent the real abrasive lapping and polishing process and employed to experimentally investigate the surface integrity regarding different scratching speeds. Three typical and different material removal stages, including the ductile mode, ductile–brittle transition mode and brittle mode, can be clearly distinguished and it is found that in the ductile material removal stage by increasing the scratching speed would inhibit the plastic deformation and improve its surface integrity. It is also found that in the ductile–brittle transition and brittle material removal stages, to increase the scratching speed would inhibit the plastic deformation due to the fast scratching speed that limits the time of plastic deformation on the target, but it also results in the increased length of lateral cracks with the increased scratching speed which can reflect that the size of brittle chips, like brittle fractures and large grain fragmentations, increases as the scratching speed increases. It can provide the references for the optimization of the abrasive lapping and polishing of RB-SiC ceramics with high efficiency and surface quality.