Molecular dynamics simulation of single discharge and dimensionless correlation with actual material removal in micro electrical discharge machining

Abstract

Shorter time pulses and length scales in micro EDM (MEDM) makes it difficult to observe the material removal phenomena taking place at very small zone during discharge. Since numerical or analytical model considers material to be uniform/isotropic, it cannot predict the discrete effects viz. crystal structure distortion due to discharge. Also, little attention has been given to the mechanism of material removal in MEDM at the atomistic level. Therefore, to understand the behaviour of material removal and crystal structure distortion due to single spark in MEDM, MD simulations have been carried out. Based on MD simulations, it was found that the percentage of material removed by vaporisation (∼40%) was higher at spark energies used in this model as compared to spark energies used by Wong et al. (20% at 23.50 µJ). Conversion from FCC crystal structure to amorphous was observed at the top surface of crater in both cases; the one with higher spark energy has marginally higher distortion indicating higher amorphisation. A new method is proposed based on which a dimensionless correlation was obtained between results of MDS and experiments which relates the ratio of specific material removal at higher spark energy to that at lower energy for both MDS and experiments