Abstract
The present paper investigates a transformation induced fracture mechanism for the cutting of Polycrystalline Cubic Boron Nitride (PCBN) sample by a hybrid CO2 laser/waterjet (CO2-LWJ) manufacturing process. In CO2-LWJ machining, a laser was used for local heating followed by waterjet quenching leading to fracture propagation along the sample surface. Cutting results indicate that as line energy of the laser was increased the sample response transitioned from scribing to through cutting. Raman spectroscopy analysis of the cut surface indicates that laser heated PCBN undergoes chemical phase transformation from sp(3)-bonded cubic Boron Nitride (cBN) into hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) and other sp(2)-bonded phases. The sp(2)-bonded structure occupies more volume than sp(3)-bonded structure such that the transformed material has a tendency to expand the original material and leads to surface deformation around the cutting path. Surface profile of the cut samples was experimentally measured using profilometry and compared with numerical predictions in order to estimate the expansion strain and dimensions of transformation region. Based on the obtained expansion strain and transformation zone, stress fields and crack driving forces were computed for channeling cracks that result in material separation. Comparison of the crack driving forces with fracture toughness of PCBN shows that transformation induced crack propagation is the feasible mechanism for cutting during CO2-LWJ machining. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.