Interaction of the cutting tools and the ceramic-reinforced metal matrix composites during micro-machining: A review

High performance ceramic-reinforced metal matrix composites (MMCs) are becoming widely popular in industry and the mechanical machining method is one of the most suitable manufacturing techniques for near net shape MMC components. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review to enhance the fundamental understanding of the tool–workpiece interactions in micro-scale during cutting process on engineered-heterogeneous materials. The paper focuses on mechanical properties, fracture mechanism and machinability of ceramic-reinforced MMCs, with significant emphasis on the chip formation mechanism considering different dominant effects, such as materials strengthening mechanisms, micro-structural effect, size effect and minimum chip thickness effect. It also includes some work that, while not directly focused on micro-scale cutting ceramic-reinforced MMCs, but provided important insight to the field of cutting engineered-heterogeneous materials (non-eutectic). Furthermore, process modeling studies for micro-scale cutting are also surveyed, including the cutting force modeling, dynamics modeling and surface generation modeling. The comments on future needs and directions are provided at the end.