FE MODELING OF MICROSTRUCTURAL CHANGES IN HARD TURNING OF AISI 52100 STEEL

Major indication of surface integrity are surface roughness and residual stresses. However, the material microstructure also changes in machined hardened steels, and it must be taken into account for improving product life performance. In this paper, a numerical FE procedure was proposed based on empirical models able to describe white and dark layers formation. A statistical approach was also applied to evaluate the correlation between the process parameters and initial hardness with the coefficients of the empirical models. The proposed empirical models for describing the white and dark layers formation combined with a hardness-based flow stress were implemented in the finite element code and their reliability was validated by comparing the predicted results with the experimental evidences.