LAUSR

Abstract The main market studies depict a future in which all one-aisle aeroplanes will mount engines composed of elements with complex surfaces. Among the new generation of tools, the barrel-shaped tools were released to the market for the machining of such types of surfaces. However, there are no evidences reported in the literature about how do these tools work. This work presents for the first time a mathematical model based on the numerical discretization of barrel cutters to predict the cutting forces. The effects of helix angle, runout and lead and tilt angles were included and the model was validated for a range of conditions in a 5-axis machine. In this line, this paper enables future mathematical developments including more details and aiming at other complex problems.