R. Curti: PhD Abstract

Analysis, modeling and simulation of green wood cutting by Discrete Element Model: milling and peeling process applications

In wood industry, logs are faced into lumbers with conical rough milling thus producing a large amount of chips which are valorized in paper pulp or particleboard industries. However a certain range in chip thickness and stability in the values is essential for these industries due to their processes. Since the chip fragmentation mechanism is complex and not fully mastered yet in wood orthogonal machining Pfeiffer et al. [1] proposed to simulate the chip formation by the mean of the Discrete Element Method (DEM). Based on this work which provided both a rich database in mechanical characteristics of green wood [2] and several qualitative results we plan to improve the simulation in order to gather quantitative results as well and extend the model to peeling process where the chip is not a “waste” to valorize anymore but the end product.

LaBoMaP_beech cutting exp_simu
Results of high speed milling experiment on green beech (left) and qualitative DEM green wood milling simulation with GranOO workbench (right)

[1] PFEIFFER Renaud, LORONG Philippe, RANC Nicolas. Simulation of green wood milling with discrete element method. In : 22nd International Wood Machining Seminar (IWMS 2015), 2015, p. 57-72.
[2] PFEIFFER Renaud, COLLET Robert, DENAUD Louis Etienne, FROMENTIN Guillaume. Analysis of chip formation mechanisms and modelling of slabber process. Wood Science and Technology, 2015, vol. 49, no 1, p. 41-58.