Material Removal Simulation of Wire Cutting Processes for an adapted Tool Design

Wire cutting is a highly flexible deconstruction technology, which is used in many fields of application. Besides the traditional application in the natural stane sector, the newest fields of interest are the wire cutting of buildings and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. According to the specific application different tool designs are available. The main difference persists in the number of diamond layers on the cutting beads. Sintered beads are multilayer tools. In contrast, brazed or electroplated beads have only one single layer of diamond grains. For both kinds of tools, bigger grain sizes or higher grain concentrations are current strategies to increase the tool periarmance. 80th strategies lead to higher tool costs and reduced chip spaces. Deterministic grain patterns are an alternative strategy to improve the tool periormance. The potential for an improved periormance of cut-off grinding wheels with deterministic grain patterns has been exemplarily proven by ARIX®System cutting segments. However, no wire cutting tools with deterministic grain patterns are available on the market. In order to clarify the potential of deterministic grain patterns also on wire cutting tools, the influence of different grain patterns on the removed material has to be investigated. For this purpose the wire cutting process is simulated by means of a material removal simulation in a first step. In this paper the simulative approach far the wire cutting process is described. Besides adapted 3D-models of the cutting beads knowledge about the kinematics of the wire cutting process is generated on a theoretical basis. Finally, different grain patterns are compared in simulation. It is shown that defined grain Patterns can increase the removed material compared to standard cutting beads with stochastic grain patterns.