An advanced machining simulation environment employing workpiece structural analysis

Purpose: The study aims to reduce the surface dimensional error due to the part deflection during the machining of thin wall structures, thus, reduce machining costs and lead times by producing “right first time” components.Design/methodology/approach: The proposed simulation environment involves a data model, an analytical force prediction model, a material removal model and an FE analysis commercial software package. It focuses on the development of the simulation environment with a multi-level machining error compensation approach.Findings: The developed simulation environment can predict and reduce the form error, which is a limitation of the existing approaches.Research limitations/implications: The energy consumption, temperature change and residual stress are not studied in this research.Practical implications: The developed method provides a platform to deliver new functionality for machining process simulation. The convergence of the proposed integrated system can be achieved quickly after only a few iterations, which makes the methodology reliable and efficient.Originality/value: The study offers an opportunity to satisfy tight tolerances, eliminate hand-finishing processes and assure part-to-part accuracy at the right first time, which is a limitation of previous approaches.