Deformation analysis of nanocutting using atomistic model

This paper adopts an atomic-scale model based on the atomistic formulation to analyze the deformation mechanism induced in a copper substrate during nanometric cutting process. The deformation evolution during the nanometric cutting process is evaluated using the energy minimization method, thereby greatly reducing the required computation time compared to the traditional Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulation results indicate that the microscopic plastic deformation in the substrate is caused by instability of its crystalline structure, and that slip vector analysis reveals the activity of dislocations is the fundamental deformation mechanism during the cutting process.