Stability improvement and vibration suppression of the thin-walled workpiece in milling process via magnetorheological fluid flexible fixture

In aerospace industry, thin-walled workpiece milling is a critical task. Also, the machining vibration is a major issue for the accuracy of the final part. In this study, a new dynamic analytical model is proposed to determine the effect of damping factor on the dynamic response of thin-walled workpiece in machining. A complex structure workpiece is equivalent to a thin plate. The fixture constrains and the damping factor are crucial elements of this thin plate. Therefore, the magnetorheological fluid flexible fixture is designed to suppress the machining vibration in machining process. Then, the general dynamic cutting force model and the damping force model are proposed for the key dynamic equation for the prediction of dynamic response to evaluate the stability of the milling process with and without the damping control. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model is validated by machining tests. The predicted values match on the experiment results.