Study on optimized bionic PDC cutter applied to hardrock drilling and rock cutting mechanism

In order improve the rock cutting efficiency of PDC cutter, a bionic non-smooth theory was applied to the surface shape design of the PDC cutter. With the similar simulation of the diamond surface shape with a wavy, delta and trapezium, the delta surface shape was optimal selected as the optimum structure. Based on the PDC cutter with a dimension of ø13.44 mm×8 mm as an example, the similar simulation was applied to the analysis on the delta groove number, three delta grooves were finally determined as the optimum. According to the optimized design plan determined, the different material and technical design were applied to process the bionic cutter of the four large saw tooth. With the micro drilling test rig, a drilling efficiency between the bionic PDC cutter and the plane PDC cutter was further compared and analyzed. The results showed that as the PDC cutter drilling efficiency of the large saw tooth was obviously better than the conventional plane piece, but a “collapsing piece” phenomenon could be easily occurred during the rock cutting process. In order to ensure the service life, the requirements of the material and processing technique should be higher than the conventional plane piece.