Framework and development of data-driven physics based model with application in dimensional accuracy prediction in pocket milling

Abstract In the manufacturing of thin wall components for aerospace industry, apart from the side wall contour error, the Remaining Bottom Thickness Error (RBTE) for the thin-wall pocket component (e.g. rocket shell) is of the same importance but overlooked in current research. If the RBTE reduces by 30%, the weight reduction of the entire component will reach up to tens of kilograms while improving the dynamic balance performance of the large component. Current RBTE control requires the off-process measurement of limited discrete points on the component bottom to provide the reference value for compensation. This leads to incompleteness in the remaining bottom thickness control and redundant measurement in manufacturing. In this paper, the framework of data-driven physics based model is proposed and developed for the real-time prediction of critical quality for large components, which enables accurate prediction and compensation of RBTE value for the thin wall components. The physics based model considers the primary root cause, in terms of tool deflection and clamping stiffness induced Axial Material Removal Thickness (AMRT) variation, for the RBTE formation. And to incorporate the dynamic and inherent coupling of the complicated manufacturing system, the multi-feature fusion and machine learning algorithm, i.e. kernel Principal Component Analysis (kPCA) and kernel Support Vector Regression (kSVR), are incorporated with the physics based model. Therefore, the proposed data-driven physics based model combines both process mechanism and the system disturbance to achieve better prediction accuracy. The final verification experiment is implemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method for dimensional accuracy prediction in pocket milling, and the prediction accuracy of AMRT achieves 0.014 mm and 0.019 mm for straight and corner milling, respectively.