Design of a bench hardware-in-the-loop system for the study of chatter in turning

The violent vibrations due to regenerative effects occurring in machining processes, also known as chatter, are a classical problem that limits the productivity in machine tools. These effects motivate a reduction of the practical life of the tool and mechanical components of the machine, and prevent obtaining required surface quality. Therefore, the chatter has been a prevalent topic for academic and industrial research. On the other hand, experimental investigations on the active reduction of chatter may be difficult in a real machining environment, given the exigency of numerous machining tests and the associated problems of repeatability, due to the involvement of a large number of practical parameters. In this paper, a mechatronic Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulator for chatter in turning is presented. Such system reproduces experimentally, on a simple mechanical structure in the laboratory, certain regenerative chatter, described by stability lobes previously obtained from the real turning machine of interest. Then, by adding inertial actuators to the HIL simulator, the performance of different algorithms for the active control of such chatter may be realistically tested.