On the sharpness of straight edge blades in cutting soft solids: Part I – indentation experiments
By Conor T. McCarthy, M. Hussey, M. Gilchrist. 2007
162 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract The sharpness of a blade is a key parameter in cutting soft solids, such as biological tissues, foodstuffs or elastomeric materials. It has a first order effect on the effort, and hence energy needed to cut, the quality of the cut surface and the life of the cutting instrument. To date, there is no standard definition, measurement or protocol to quantify blade sharpness. This paper derives a quantitative index of blade sharpness via indentation experiments in which elastomeric materials are cut using both sharp and blunt straight edge blades. It is found that the depth of blade indentation required to initiate a cut or crack in the target material is a function of the condition or sharpness of the blade’s cutting edge, and this property is used to formulate a so-called “blade sharpness index” (BSI). It is shown theoretically that this index is zero for an infinitely sharp blade and increases in a quadratic manner for increasing bluntness. For the blades tested herein, the sharpness index was found to vary between 0.2 for sharp blades and 0.5 for blunt blades, respectively. To examine the suitability of the index in other cutting configurations, experiments are performed using different blade types, target materials and cutting rates and it is found that the index is independent of the target material and cutting rate and thus pertains to the blade only. In the companion Part II to this paper a finite element model is developed to examine the effect of blade geometry on the sharpness index derived herein.
Subfields: Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Ocean Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d3457159838d405927a07c034932ead0a40a0e36
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In Mechanical Engineering
In Mechanics of Materials
In Ocean Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- Characterization of the anisotropic mechanical properties of excised human skin. (2013, background): “The data obtained in this study will provide essential information for those wishing to model the skin using a structural constitutive model.”
- On the sharpness of straight edge blades in cutting soft solids: Part II – Analysis of blade geometry (2010, methodology): “In Part I of this companion paper [1] a quantitative metric for the sharpness of a straight edged blade was developed and critically assessed for different blade types and target or substrate materials (i.”