Friction drilling utilizes the heat generated by friction between the rotating tool and work-material, and plastic deformation to soften and penetrate thin-walled workpieces to make a hole. High temperature softens the workpiece and allows the work material to flow and form the hole and bushing.

It is a clean, chip less hole making process that forms a bushing from thin workpieces that can increase the depth for threading and the clamp load capability. It involves large work-material deformation, and high tool and workpiece temperatures. Simulation is necessary to understand the material flow, temperatures, stresses, and strains, which are difficult to measure experimentally. Isight can be used to evaluate the optimized value of the coefficient of friction for best match of the simulation results with experiment.

1. Friction Drilling Simulation

2. Friction Drilling: Simulation VIDEO

3. Presentation: Thermo-Mechanical Abaqus Simulation of Friction Drilling Process based on Isight Optimization and Data Matching

4. Rigid Tool Dimensions

5. Isight optimization to evaluate coefficient of friction value to obtain best match of the simulation results with experiment

6. Isight Data Matching Component: Minimize the sum of absolute area difference between the simulation and target graphs

7. Elements deleted (blue – made visible here) by Abaqus as the tool penetrates the workpiece

8. Simulation Result Comparison with Experiment: Thrust Force

9. Simulation Result Comparison with Experiment: Torque

10. Simulation Result Comparison with Experiment: Torque