In-process identification of milling parameters based on digital twin driven intelligent algorithm

Abstract The potential benefits of Industry 4.0 have led to an increased interest in smart manufacturing. To facilitate the self-diagnosis and adaptive ability in smart milling system, a digital twin driven intelligent algorithm for monitoring in-process milling parameters is proposed here. The algorithm can extract the radial width of cut, axial depth of cut, cutter runout parameters and cutting constants in the end milling process at the same time only by using force sensor. It is an important breakthrough in this paper to converge two different force models to realize cyber-physical fusion for identifying milling parameters in the milling process. By using the convolution force model, digital twin technology can extract the approximate solution of milling parameters in the machining process in advance, so as to narrow the range of solution. Furthermore, the subsequent artificial intelligence algorithm can find the accurate solution of the current milling parameters in a short calculation time by cyber-physical fusion with the numerical force model considering cutter runout effect. Milling experiments are carried out to validate the proposed algorithm. It is shown that due to the complementary advantages of the convolution force model and numerical force model, the algorithm proposed in this paper can give consideration to the identification accuracy and calculation efficiency.