Fast extraction of cutter engagement features by using the parallel processing function of a GPU

摘要

For an accurate analysis of the cutting force, the cutter engagement feature (CEF) representing the contact area between the cutter and workpiece must be extracted for each small feed motion of the cutter. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for accelerating the CEF computation by using the parallel processing capability of a graphics processing unit. In a milling simulation, the results of a prior cutting operation affect the subsequent CEF computations. This dependency on the cutting sequence can be ignored in a cutting operation along a linear trajectory. Based on this consideration, a new parallel CEF computation algorithm is developed. Our cutting simulation system using this algorithm can compute the CEF at 100,000 cutting positions in a few seconds.