On the material removal mechanism in rotary ultrasonic milling of ultralow-density silica aerogel composites

Abstract Silica aerogel composite with ultralow density is a kind of highly porous solid with excellent property of thermal conductivity. It is widely used for thermal insulation in aerospace, national defense and military industries. However, silica aerogel composites are difficult to process, due to the poor mechanical properties, low strength and high brittleness. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the processing characteristics and material removal mechanism of silica aerogel composites. In this article, a cutting model of silica aerogel composites is established firstly and the fracture mechanism of fiber was analyzed. Then the ultrasonic milling and conventional milling experiments were performed respectively to obtain the features of machined surface. Macro morphology and surface roughness of machined surfaces in different process conditions are compared to investigate the influence of different process conditions on the processing quality. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to obtain the micro morphology of processed surfaces. By comparing and analyzing the micro morphology of processed surfaces, the influence of process conditions on removal mechanism was investigated. The theoretical cutting force and experiment cutting force is compared to verify the cutting model. The results show that the burrs and pits decrease with the ultrasonic vibration amplitude, and increase with the tool diameter. Processing quality of up-milling is better than down-milling. It is indicated that shearing and pulling off are the main removal mechanism of silica aerogel composites. When the silica aerogel composites are processed by rotary ultrasonic milling and up milling, the fibers will be mainly removed by shearing mechanism and the proportion of fibers removed by shearing facture mechanism will be improved with the increase of ultrasonic amplitude.