Force modeling of silicon monocrystal wire saw machining

Wire saw machining is often used to cut hard and brittle materials, especially wafers in the semiconductor and optoelectronics industries. The cutting forces strongly effect part quality. Based on analyzing the forces generated from the chip deformation and friction of a single abrasive, an analytical force model is developed. The model is extended to a wire saw cutting force model and is used to explain the relationship between the cutting force and the part feed rate, wire velocity, and contact length between the wire and part. Silicon (Si) monocrystal machining is used to experimentally validate the proposed model. The results show that when machining Si monocrystal the average errors between the experimental and predicted normal and tangential cutting forces are 10.9% and 18.6%, respectively.