Thermal characteristic analysis of ball screw feed drive system based on finite difference method considering the moving heat source

The thermal characteristic of the ball screw feed drive system has great influence on machining accuracy as its thermal deformation would induce the positioning deviation. In this paper, finite difference method was applied to simulate the temperature distribution and thermal growth of the ball screw feed drive system under various working conditions. When simulating, the nut was considered a moving heat source, and the boundary conditions were optimized based on response surface methodology. By comparing the simulation results with the testing data, it was verified that the accuracy of the simulation could be improved by using the proposed method.