The advent of microfabrication technologies in the last couple of decades according to advancement of mechanical equipments and scientific technologies has led the beginning of micro machine, micro machining technology, and micro factory.
The major te...
The advent of microfabrication technologies in the last couple of decades according to advancement of mechanical equipments and scientific technologies has led the beginning of micro machine, micro machining technology, and micro factory.
The major technologies applied to produce micro parts and micro components are the micro electronic fabrication technique like micro electromechanical systems and X-ray lithography technology and also micro manufacturing technologies like micro electric discharge machining and focused ion beam process. However, these kinds of technologies have the limitation of materials and shapes. Regardless of the materials and shapes, the mechanical machining of micro/meso-level parts and shapes is carried out by ultra precision machining processes such as diamond turning, micro milling, micro drilling, and micro grinding, but these processes tend to increase high production cost and lengthy production time. In order to overcome the drawbacks and difficulties of such technologies, recently micro/meso machine tool and microfatory system have been materialized due to effective usefulness and efficient system maintenance. One of the most important issues to be considered in development of micro/meso machine tool and micro factory is the effect on dynamic behavior and dynamic characteristics by miniaturization of machine structure from macro to micro system. Therefore, it is the key to find out whether the research on structural analysis accumulated in macro system can be applied to the new concept micro system.
This paper is to study that the structure miniaturization has effect on dynamic parameters of bolt-jointed structure to predict the changes in structural characteristics and dynamic behaviors to occur in micro/meso machine and micro factory.
The dynamic characteristics of natural frequencies, damping ratios, and mode shapes are identified and compared through modal testing with test models by 4 types of size from macro to micro-size, 2 types of joining conditions like monolithic and bolt-jointed model, and 2 types of materials like SS41 and AL6061. In addition, natural frequencies and mode shapes by using the exact same finite element analysis as is generally applied to conventional macro system are also extracted and compared with the results of modal testing. Based on the results of modal testing and finite element analysis, the natural frequencies according to joining condition and material in macro-size test model are little changes; on the other hands, those in AL6061 micro-size bolt-jointed test model are much lower than we expected. This unusual feature results from the changes of dynamic characteristics in bolt-jointed structure due to the miniaturization from macro to micro-scale, the decrease of joining stiffness in bolt-joints, and the change of material from steel to aluminum. In this research, I suggest the modified natural frequency equation considering weighting factors on the basis of the result of modal testing and predict the natural frequency in micro-size model by using that in macro-size model.
Unfortunately, since a study on the structural characteristics according to the scale-down has never been verified so far, the structural test and dynamic analysis to predict dynamic behavior and structural characteristics of micro/meso machine structure in advance is indispensable to new system design and design modification.