Aluminum alloys 6061-T6 are widely utilized in the automotive, aerospace and marine industries due to high corrosion resistance, high strength, and good workability and machinability. The machining performance of these alloys depend on several factors including tool's material, coating and geometry.Cutting tool edge radius is one of the most effective factors in cutting forces, energy requirement and chip formation during metal cutting. The present article aims to study the interactions between the cutting edge radius and cutting speed, feed rate and rake angle and examine the impacts of the aforementioned tool geometry and cutting conditions on machining forces, cutting temperature, and chip thickness in cutting an aluminum alloy 6061-T6. Special attention is devoted to examining the influence of the cutting edge radius on machining variables and comparing the results of conventional machining (CM) and high speed machining (HSM). A finite element model was developed to simulate the above intercations and was experimentally validated for different machining parameters. The results demonstrate that although increasing the cutting edge radius clearly raises the machining forces, it has a slight influence on the chip thickness. It is also found that the maximum cutting temperatures remain nearly constant with changes in the tool edge radius, while the average temperatures of the tool tip increase especially in HSM. Furthermore, it was found that the location at which the maximum cutting temperature occurs depends more on cutting conditions and tool geometry than workpiece and tool materials.

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The present research work aimed to study the effects of cutting environments and conditions on tool wear and residual stresses induced by orthogonal cutting of AA6061-T6. Cutting environments included dry- and flood-coolant modes and cutting conditions consisted of cutting speed and feed rate. A 2D finite element (FE) model was developed to predict tool wear and residual stresses and was validated by experimental measurements including machining forces, tool wear, and residual stresses. This was obtained by exploring various magnitudes of the shear friction factor and heat transfer coefficient and choosing proper coefficients using the calibration of the predicted results with the measured ones. The experimental results showed that the effect of cutting environment including dry and flood-coolant modes was negligible on machining forces. The experimental investigation also demonstrated that increasing feed rate raised machining forces, tool wear and residual stresses in both cutting environments. Low Speed Cutting (LSC) led to the highest value of tool wear and High Speed Cutting (HSC) provided the lowest values of resultant machining forces and residual stresses in both modes. Flood-coolant mode reduced tool wear and slightly decreased tensile residual stresses in comparison with dry mode. As a result, low feed rate and high-speed cutting under flood-coolant mode were proposed in order to improve tool wear and residual stress in orthogonal cutting of AA6061-T6.