Non-linear mechanism in electrical discharge machining process

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is an advanced non-traditional manufacturing technology that has many advantages over other machining methods. Many papers have discussed the machining mechanism and modeling of the EDM process. However, previous mechanism models have mainly been linear, which contradicts their precondition that EDM is a stochastic process. In this paper, a non-linear mechanism model is proposed for the EDM process. A threshold condition that leads to chaos is calculated using the Melnikov theory. The theoretical results indicate that the EDM system can generate varied chaos in the evolution of electrical discharge. To verify this conclusion, validation experiments are implemented. Several sets of complete EDM processes’ real-time series are analyzed by multiple chaotic numerical criteria, including power spectrum analysis, principle component analysis (PCA), correlation dimension analysis, and Lyapunov exponent analysis. The experimental results provide further qualitative and quantitative evidence that a complete EDM process has dynamical chaotic characteristics.