Micromachining Using Pulsed Water Droplets 491
9.4.4 Simulation Of Impact Machining
Liquid impact was simulated by modeling an approximately shaped
triangular wave (the Rayleigh stress wave) moving radially away
from the center of impact. A computer program was written [2, 6,
20] that simulated the extension of a surface crack until it appeared
visible to the naked eye and resulted in material loss. The crack was
situated immediately outside the release radius where the Rayleigh
wave was developed.
The program calculated the initial impact conditions such as
equivalent water drop diameter based on the properties of the mate-
rial,
impact velocity, and the distance of the crack from the center of
impact. In order to increase the speed of computation, a set of pre-
generated tables of quasi-static stress intensity factors were accessed
using a simple linear interpolation routine to provide input for calcu-
lating the dynamic stress intensity factor. After setting the initial
crack length as the critical crack length and its velocity at zero, a
crack was excited by simulating the action of a passing Rayleigh
wave over the length of the crack. An iterative procedure was estab-
lished to simulate the passing wave over the crack up to 300 times in
order to establish the damage threshold of the target material.
Every iteration of the program calculated the length of the crack
after each wave pulse. Initially, the crack tip response time was cal-
culated. The stress wave distribution, as a function of depth, was
calculated and incremented with a pre-determined series of time
steps.
The time dependence of the stress wave, and its effect on the
dynamic stress intensity factor was established by selecting the ap-
propriate dynamic stress intensity factor that is dependent on the re-
sponse characteristics of the material subjected to liquid impact.
The program also checked to see whether the crack was moving,
or not, by comparing the dynamic stress intensity factor with the
static fracture toughness of the material. The current crack velocity
was calculated together with the new crack length. If the crack
length exceeded 100 jum, then the number of iterations was deter-
mined for that particular impact velocity. For crack lengths less than
100 |um, the program would re-iterate the routine to find the number
of iterations required for the crack to grow to a length of 100 |um.