Mechanical Ruling of Diffraction Grating: Part II — Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation

This is Part II of a two-part series study on mechanical ruling of diffraction grating. In Part I, effects of the Al film preparation process on the film attributes were investigated in terms of surface morphology, microstructure and mechanical properties using SEM, XRD, nanoindentation and scratch tests. In this part, mechanical ruling experiments were carried out on the prepared Al films with various thicknesses. The effect of ruling loads on the groove geometry were investigated. The tool wear after the mechanical ruling tests was inspected. A three-dimensional thermomechanical coupled finite element (FE) model was developed to predict the deformation and temperature fields during mechanical ruling. The strain gradient plasticity model was used in the FE analysis to model the size effect during the process. The multi-pass effect on the variation of groove geometry was predicted and analyzed with the FE model under different loading conditions.