Stability prediction for milling process with multiple delays using an improved semi-discretization method

Milling chatter leads to a poor surface finish, premature tool wear, and potential damage to the machine or tool. Thus, it is desirable to predict and avoid the onset of this instability. Considering that the stability of milling with variable pitch cutter or tool runout case is characterized by multiple delays, in this paper, an improved semi‐discretization method is proposed to predict the stability lobes for milling processes with multiple delays. Taking the variable pitch milling, for example, a comparisonwith prior methods is conducted to verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach for the stability prediction both in low and high radial immersion ratios. In addition, the rate of convergence of the proposed method is also evaluated. The results show that the proposed method has high computational efficiency. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.