Investigation of the feasibility and effectiveness in using heat pipe-embedded drills by finite element analysis

Drilling is a sufficiently severe machining process coupled with thermomechanical effect, in which mechanical work is converted to heat through the plastic deformation involved in chip formation and friction between tool and workpiece. The elevated temperature at the tool-chip interface has deleterious effects on the dimensional accuracy of the workpiece and shortens the service life of the tool. In this paper, the feasibility and effectiveness of heat pipe cooling in drilling operations are investigated numerically. A new embedded heat pipe technology was utilized to remove the heat generated at the tool interface in the foregoing cutting process. Numerical studies involved four different cooling conditions, i.e., dry drilling, fluid cooling, heat pipe cooling, and heat pipe cooling with cutting fluid supplied. The thermal, structural static, and dynamic characteristics of the drill were investigated using a numerical calculation with fast finite element plus solvers based on explicit finite element analysis software COSMOS\works. The results demonstrate that the heat pipe drill is most feasible and effective in the actual drilling processes.