Subsurface damage is easily induced in machining of hard and brittle materials because of their particular mechanical and physical properties. It is detrimental to the strength, performance and lifetime of a machined part. To manufacture a high quality part, it is necessary to detect and remove the machining induced subsurface damage by the subsequent processes. However, subsurface damage is often covered with a smearing layer generated in a machining process, it is rather difficult to directly observe and detect by optical microscopy. An efficient detection of subsurface damage directly leads to quality improvement and time saving for machining of hard and brittle materials. This paper presents a review of the methods for detection of subsurface damage, both destructive and non-destructive. Although more reliable, destructive methods are typically time-consuming and confined to local damage information. Non-destructive methods usually suffer from uncertainty factors, but may provide global information on subsurface damage distribution. These methods are promising because they can provide a capacity of rapid scan and detection of subsurface damage in spatial distribution.

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This paper proposes the 'skin effect' of the machining-induced damage at high strain rates. The paper first reviews the published research work on machining-induced damage and then identifies the governing factors that dominate damage formation mechanisms. Among many influential factors, such as stress-strain field, temperature field, material responses to loading and loading rate, and crack initiation and propagation, strain rate is recognized as a dominant factor that can directly lead to the 'skin effect' of material damage in a loading process. The paper elucidates that material deformation at high strain rates (>10 3 s −1 ) leads to the embrittlement, which in turn contributes to the 'skin effect' of subsurface damage. The paper discusses the 'skin effect' based on the principles of dislocation kinetics and crack initiation and propagation. It provides guidance to predicting the material deformation and damage at a high strain-rate for applications ranging from the armor protection, quarrying, petroleum drilling, and high-speed machining of engineering materials (e.g. ceramics and SiC reinforced aluminum alloys).

Single-crystal silicon is an important material in the semiconductor and optical industries. However, being hard and brittle, a silicon wafer is vulnerable to subsurface cracks (SSCs) during grinding, which is detrimental to the performance and lifetime of a wafer product. Therefore, studying the formation of SSCs is important for optimizing SSC-removal processes and thus improving surface integrity. In this study, a statistical method is used to study the formation of SSCs induced during grinding of silicon wafers. The statistical results show that grinding-induced SSCs are not stochastic but anisotropic in their distributions. Generally, when grinding with coarse abrasive grains, SSCs form along the cleavage planes, primarily the {111} planes. However, when grinding with finer abrasive grains, SSCs tend to form along planes with a fracture-surface energy higher than that of the cleavage planes. These findings provide a guidance for the accurate detection of SSCs in ground silicon wafers.

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