International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijmactool

Effect of machining parameters and coating on wear mechanisms

in dry drilling of aluminium alloys
M. Nouari*, G. List, F. Girot, D. Gehin
Laboratoire Materiaux Endommagement Fiabilite et Ingenierie des Procedes, Centre dEnseignement et de Recherche de Bordeaux, Ecole Nationale
Superieure dArts et Metiers de Bordeaux, Esplanade des Arts et Metiers, 33405 Talence Cedex, France
Received 22 September 2004; accepted 20 January 2005
Available online 19 March 2005

Abstract
The temperature generated by friction and plastic deformation in the secondary shear zone strongly controls tool wear. At lower cutting
speeds tool wear is not severe insofar as the temperature is not significant. When the cutting speed is increased, there is a transition in wear
mechanisms from abrasion and/or adhesion to diffusion. In the present paper, the change in wear mechanisms as a function of cutting speed
and coating material is discussed. The cutting tests were performed on a rigid instrumented drilling bench without the use of cutting fluids.
AA2024 aluminium alloy was used to investigate the wear mechanisms of cemented tungsten carbide and HSS tools. Three cutting speeds
(25, 65 and 165 m/min) and a constant feed rate of 0.04 mm/rev were selected for the experiments. The best results in terms of maximum and
minimum hole diameter deviations and surface roughness are obtained for the uncoated and coated tungsten carbide drills. The results also
show that HSS tool is not suitable for dry machining of AA2024 aluminium alloy.
q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Dry machining; Cutting speed; Wear mechanisms; Coating; Temperature

1. Introduction
Within the framework of an optimisation of the cutting
process, the knowledge of the tool wear is essential. In dry
drilling, tool failure is an important factor that affects
productivity and manufacturing efficiency. For that reason,
one of the major objective of cutting research is the
assessment of tool wear and the prediction of tool life.
Several investigations have shown that tool wear is
mainly due to abrasion at lower speed conditions. When the
cutting speed is increased, the tool rake face temperature
can increase consequently. This temperature can be further
increased without using coolants and lubricants (dry
machining configuration). This is due to the important
deformation associated with large shear strains in
the primary shear zone and to the friction effects along

* Corresponding author. Tel.: C33 5 56 84 54 48; fax: C33 5 56 84 53

66.
E-mail address: mohammed.nouari@lamef.bordeaux.ensam.fr
(M. Nouari).

0890-6955/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2005.01.026

the toolchip interface [1]. Consequently, diffusion is

considered as the dominant wear mechanism for tools at
higher cutting speeds. The atoms that are diffused from the
tool to the chip are carried away by the flow of work
material along the contact surface. The material transfer
towards the chip leads to the formation of an adhesion layer
and a build-up edge or to the formation of a crater on the tool
rake face at extreme cutting conditions. This will consequently lead to significant reduction in tool life.

2. Tool wear mechanisms in dry drilling

The identification of tool wear mechanisms appears
among the principal objectives of the current research in
metal cutting. In spite of the large amount of data and
knowledge that have been accumulated, tool wear is still not
fully understood. Most of the existing models are based on
empirical approaches [24]. The few analytical studies that
have been carried out do not take into account all the
phenomena leading to the formation of the chip [57]. The
different wear modes depend on toolworkpiece material,
the nature of coating and cutting conditions or machining
parameters [8]. Wear analysis have traditionally

M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

Fig. 1. A schematic representation of the diffusion process with the couple:

cemented carbide/steel (WC-Co/FeC).

emphasized flank wear more than crater wear due to the

direct influence of flank wear on the quality of the product.
As mentioned before, tool wear is mainly due to abrasion at
low cutting speed. Abrasion wear dominates when the
contact conditions at the toolchip interface are essentially
sliding [9,10].
During machining, the rake face is subjected to
increased pressure and high temperature, hence the
formation of an adhesive layer in the contact zone.
Adhesion wear is caused by the mechanical removal of
the tool material when the adhesive junctions are broken.

1437

An increase in the cutting speed as well as machining

without cutting fluid, the tool rake face temperature can
increase significantly. The role that temperature plays in
metal cutting processes was first studied from an
experimental point of view. Taylor [4] confirmed in
1907, that increasing cutting speeds entails an increase
in tool temperatures and consequently a decrease in tool
life. Indeed, under the effect of temperature, atoms moves
from the tool to the chip leading to the formation of a
crater on the tool surface in the case of machining steels
(Fig. 1) and to the formation of an adhesive layer in the
case of machining ductile materials like aluminium alloys.
Trent [11,12] referred to these wear mechanisms as
diffusion wear. Diffusion is considered as the dominant
process of tool wear in high cutting speed. This was
confirmed by Trent and Wright, [13,14]. Photographic
evidence was provided by Trent [13], showing a smooth
crater surface with no deformation of tungsten carbide
particles in the tool near to the toolchip interface. These
observations support the fact that abrasion wear do not
operate at higher cutting velocities. Diffusion wear for
cutting velocities greater than 150 m/min was illustrated by
experimental results of Naerheim [15], who showed the
existence of concentration gradients of tungsten, carbon
and cobalt within the chip at the toolchip interface.
In this work, wear mechanisms are investigated in the
case of machining AA2024 aluminium alloys with coated
and uncoated tools. The machining operation retained here
is dry drilling.

Table 1
Chemical composition (wt%) of AA2024 T351
Al

Cr

Cu

Fe

Mg

Mn

Si

Ti

Zn

93.5

Max 0.1

3.84.9

Max 0.5

1.21.8

0.30.9

Max 0.5

Max 0.15

Max 0.25

Fig. 2. Tools used in the experiments and drill geometry.

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M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

Table 2
The relevant properties of tools employed

Tool material
Tool reference
Coating
Helix angle (8)
Pointe angle (8)

Tool A

Tool B

Tool C

Carbide
TF-Drill
None
30
130

Carbide
TF-Drill
TiAlNCWC/C
30
130

HSS
1055 (DIN 1897)
None
30
130

3. Experimental set-up and procedure

a maximum rotation of 42,000 rpm (Fig. 3). The experimental data were collected with the data acquisition
system. The holes were produced with a depth of 8 mm
and a diameter of 6 mm. In this study, the following
parameters were taken into account to evaluate the holes
quality: the surface roughness, the maximum and minimum
diameter deviations.
The drill geometry makes the modelling difficult (Fig. 2);
indeed, the basic principle of drilling shows that cutting with
the drill lips is similar to an oblique cutting process [16].
Moreover, the rake angle, the inclination angle and

3.1. Workpiece and tool materials

In this study, an aluminium alloy (AA2024) with the
chemical composition given in Table 1 was selected as the
workpiece material. The conductivity, density and thermal
capacity are, respectively: 42.6 W/m K, 7850 kg/m3 and
473 J/kg 8C.
The tests were carried out with HSS and cemented
tungsten carbide tools (coated and uncoated) (Fig. 2). Tool
type, coating material and geometrical characteristic for each
drilling tool are listed in Table 2. A coating material called
Hardlubew ((Ti,Al)NCWC/C) was used for the cemented
carbide drills. It is a multi-layer coating. The combination of
hard/soft coating layers improves the chip flow by reducing
the friction coefficient and the cutting forces. (Ti,Al)N is the
hard layer with a hardness of 3300 HV and WC/C with
a hardness of 1000 HV. The later is a softer layer with a
medium micro-hardness and a low friction coefficient. It is
considered as a lubricant layer. In industry, this coating
is usually used to drill soft steels and aluminium alloys.
Uncoated HSS tools were used in this study.
3.2. Machining conditions
All the machining tests were performed on a rigid
instrumented drilling bench with a power of 14 kW and

Fig. 3. Instrumented drilling bench.

Fig. 4. Influence of the cutting speed on hole dimensions after drilling with
uncoated carbide drill A at a constant feed of 0.04 mm/rev. (a) VZ25,
(b) 65 and (c) 165 m/min.

M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

the cutting velocity vary along the drill radius. To simplify

the modelling, the drilling was simulated only on drill
corner level, which on a small length can be considered as
an orthogonal cutting process.
Several numerical simulations were conducted with a
commercial finite element code (Third Wave AdvantEdgew) in order to confirm our experimental analysis. The
importance of this computational tool is to have access to
the parameters which are difficult to be measured such as the
toolchip interface temperature, chip velocity, etc.

1439

the diameter increases rapidly beyond the thirtieth hole

while it remained relatively stable for all the holes produced
at lower speeds of 25 and 65 m/min. This can be explained
by the fact that at lower cutting speeds tool wear is not
severe, insofar as the temperature generated by friction and
plastic deformation in the secondary shear zone is not
significant at these cutting velocities. To prove that, tool
chip interface temperature was calculated using numerical
code under the same cutting conditions as those used in the
experiments. The results of the calculations presented in
Fig. 5 illustrate the major effect of the cutting speed on
the toolchip interface temperature. For VZ25 m/min, the

4. Results and analysis

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the
influence of the cutting parameters on the quality of
the holes produced and consequently on the activation of
the different type of tool wear mechanisms.
The results contained in this section were obtained with
cutting speeds ranging from 25 to 165 m/min and with a
constant feed rate f of 0.04 mm/rev. The curves in Figs. 4
and 6 are related to the uncoated cemented carbide drill
A and coated cemented carbide drill B (Table 1),
respectively, show variation of the maximum and minimum
hole diameter deviations with prolong machining at various
cutting conditions. In the industry, deviation of the
maximum and minimum diameter is an important information frequently used to evaluate the quality and
dimensional accuracy of drilled holes.
In Fig. 4(a) and (b) there was a weak variation of the
diameter according to the number of holes produced at
lower cutting speeds up to 65 m/min. When the cutting
speed is increased to 165 m/min (Fig. 4(c)) variation of

Fig. 5. Calculation of the temperature distribution on the tool rake face with
numerical code. The toolworkpiece couple is uncoated WC-Co/ AA2024
T351 and the cutting conditions are similar to those of Fig. 4.

Fig. 6. Influence of the cutting speed on drilled holes after drilling with
coated carbide drill B at a constant feed rate of 0.04 mm/rev. (a) VZ25, (b)
65 and (c) 165 m/min.

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M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

maximum temperature is about 80 8C, for VZ65 m/min

125 8C, for VZ165 m/min 180 8C and for VZ300 m/min
220 8C.
Higher cutting speeds generate higher chip sliding
velocities and consequently generate a significant temperature on the rake face of the tool. This explains the poor
diameter deviation obtained with VZ165 m/min in Fig. 4(c)
caused by severe tool damage.
The curves shown in Fig. 6(ac) were obtained with the
coated carbide tool B as defined in Table 2. The cutting

(a)

6.3
Min.

6.25
Diameter (mm)

conditions are similar to those of Fig. 4. It is interesting to note

that, on one hand the uncoated drill A produced holes with
good dimensional accuracy while the coated drill B produced
holes with worse precision at lower cutting speeds (VZ25 m/
min) (Figs. 4(a) and 6(a)). On the other hand, drilling at a
higher speed (VZ165 m/min) reversed the trend. In other
words, coated tool B gave better result compared to the
uncoated tool A at a high cutting speed of 165 m/min.

Max.

6.2
6.15
6.1
6.05
6
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

40

50

60

20
30
40
Number of holes

50

60

Number of holes

(b)

6.3
Min.

Diameter (mm)

6.25

Max.

6.2
6.15
6.1
6.05
6
0

10

20

30
Number of holes

(c)

6.3
Min.

Diameter (mm)

6.25

Max.

6.2
6.15
6.1
6.05
6
0

10

Fig. 7. Influence of the cutting speed on drilled hole dimensions after

drilling with coated carbide drill C at a constant feed rate of 0.04 mm/rev.
(a) VZ25, (b) 65 and (c) 165 m/min.

Fig. 8. Influence of the cutting speed on the hole surface roughness for each
considered drill: (a) drill A, (b) drill B and (c) drill C. The feed rate is taken
constant to 0.04 mm/rev.

M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

These results confirm the analysis that was previously

done on cutting speed and temperature effects. Indeed, the
coating material constitutes a thermal barrier and limits the
diffusion process. Diffusion is an activated thermal process,
thus the formation of the adhesive layer at the toolchip
interface, and which is responsible of tool damage, can be
avoided by using coating. Regarding the HSS tool C,
results presented in Fig. 7, show that the dimensional
accuracy of the holes produced is the worst compared to the
carbide drills A and B. This suggests that the HSS drill is not
suitable for dry machining of AA2024 aluminium alloy.
The surface roughness values measured after a certain
number of holes were drilled; the results are shown in Fig. 8.
Three cutting speeds are considered (25, 65 and 165 m/
min). For the carbide drills the cutting speed effect is
significant after the 30th hole. The trends in Fig. 8 show that
drilling with the coated and uncoated carbide drills
produced similar surface finishes while higher surface
roughness values, hence poor surface finish, were recorded
when drilling with HSS drills.

1441

aluminium alloy [26,27]. These temperatures are sufficient

to activate diffusion in aluminium. It was shown in turning
test on a carbide tool with a cutting speed of 100 m/min and
a feed rate of 0.4 mm/rev that aluminium atoms are detected
until a depth of 80 mm from the interface in the cutting tool
[20]. Thus at higher cutting speeds (VZ165 m/min.)

5. Wear mechanisms for aluminium alloys

In dry machining of aluminium alloys, the wear and
damage of cutting tools can be in various forms. This
depends not only on the nature of the toolworkpiece couple
but also on the cutting process (Table 3). Abrasion wear
appears particularly when the alloy contains inclusions. But
in the majority of cases, the damage is caused by adhesion
of the machined material on the tool surface. Therefore, tool
geometry can seriously change with consequent on the
machined surface quality and the required geometrical
tolerances. In machining of the AA2024 alloy, adhesion
wear appears by the formation (at the same time) of the
Built-Up Edge (BUE) and the Built-Up Layer (BUL).
BUE and BUL are the results of a chip material transfer
on the tool cutting face [18,20]. The toolchip interface
temperatures can reach high values in machining of
Table 3
Damage mechanisms of tools during machining of different aluminium
alloys
Workpiece
material

Tool material

Cutting process

Damage, wear

Pure Al

Carbide

AlSi

Carbide

Adherence
layer [17]
BUE [17]

Al2024
Al2024

Carbide
Carbide

Orthogonal
cutting
Orthogonal
cutting
Turning
Drilling

Al2024
A356
A356
ACP 5080
AlSiC

Carbide
Carbide
HSS
HSS
Carbide

Milling
Drilling
Drilling
Drilling
Drilling

BUE, BUL [18]

BUE, BUL [19,
20]
BUE [21]
Stuck chip [22]
Flank wear [23]
Stuck chip [24]
Abrasion [25]

Fig. 9. MEB pictures of the carbide drill cutting face after drilling 70 holes,
(a) drill A at VZ25 m/min. (b) Drill B at VZ65 m/min and (c) drill A at
VZ165 m/min.

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M. Nouari et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 14361442

the adherent layer progressively grows during the drilling

process and the cutting edge accumulates workpiece
material fragments (Fig. 9).
As a consequence, a progressive increase of the drilled
hole diameter is observed (Fig. 4(c)). When drilling at a
lower speed (Fig. 9(a)) the cutting temperature is reduced
and the quantity of the adhered material is also reduced. The
presence of coating (Fig. 9(b)) further lowers the temperature effect and consequently the adherence tendency.
However, it seems that the cutting speed should not exceed
a certain value to have an optimal quality of the holes
produced (Fig. 6(b) and (c)). The best results, in terms of the
hole quality, are obtained for the uncoated carbide drill at a
cutting speed of 25 m/min and the coated drill at a cutting
speed of 65 m/min.

6. Conclusions
During dry drilling of AA2024 aluminium alloy, the
important role played by the cutting speed and its effect on
the tool damage and consequently on the quality of the
produced holes are illustrated. The cutting parameters
determine the physical conditions at the toolchip interface.
Under high pressure and temperature at the contact zone, a
material deposition is formed on the tool rake face. To limit
this adhesion layer the optimal cutting conditions and the
optimal tool geometry should be chosen. Increasing the
cutting speed leads to an increase in the interface
temperature, which promotes the aluminium transfer from
the workpiece to the tool by the diffusion mechanism. The
analysis of the results presented in this paper shows that for
a small constant feed rate, low cutting speeds are
appropriate for dry machining of AA2024 with uncoated
cemented tungsten carbide tool. Drilling at higher speed
conditions can be interesting if the cost of tool is not
important even if fewer holes are produced at higher cutting
speed than at lower speeds. The use of cemented carbide
drills with the coating material TiAlNCWC/C can be a
solution when drilling at higher speeds. Nevertheless,
whatever the used cutting speed the HSS drills are not
suitable for dry drilling aluminium alloys.

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