On the sharpness of straight edge blades in cutting soft solids: Part II – Analysis of blade geometry

By Conor T. McCarthy, Aisling Ní Annaidh, M. Gilchrist. 2010

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In Part I of this paper a new metric, titled the “blade sharpness index” or “BSI”, for quantifying the sharpness of a straight edge blade when cutting soft solids was derived from first principles and verified experimentally by carrying out indentation type cutting tests with different blade types cutting different target or substrate materials. In this Part II companion paper, a finite element model is constructed to examine the effect of different blade variables including tip radius, wedge angle and blade profile on the BSI developed in Part I. The finite element model is constructed using ABAQUS implicit and experiments are performed to characterise the non-linear material behaviour observed in the elastomeric substrate. The model is validated against the experiments performed in Part I and a suitable failure criterion is determined by carrying out experiments on blades with different tip radii. The paper finds that a simple maximum stress criterion is a good indicator for predicting the onset of cutting. The validated model is then used to examine blade geometry. It is shown that finite element analysis is an important tool in helping to understand the mechanics of indentation. Furthermore, the study finds that all the blade geometric variables have an influence on the sharpness of a blade, with the BSI being most sensitive to tip radius. Increasing the tip radius and wedge angle decreases the sharpness of the blade.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad77f6fefdb1e6507959a68c7f6d7ed2081b3d0f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Michel Destrade
2. M. Gilchrist
3. K. Bruyère
4. M. Ottenio
5. Aisling Ní Annaidh

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Aisling Ní Annaidh
2. Michel Destrade
3. M. Gilchrist

In Mechanics of Materials

1. Aisling Ní Annaidh
2. M. Gilchrist

Citations in the corpus

• Characterization of the anisotropic mechanical properties of excised human skin. (2013, background): “Most in-vitro investigations use human skin substitutes such as pigskin, silicone or polyurethane (McCarthy et al., 2007; Gilchrist et al., 2008; Jor et al., 2011; McCarthy et al., 2010) and in-vitro tests on human skin are particularly rare.”