Evaluation of thermal damages and residual stresses in dry grinding by structured wheels

Due to the demand for environmental friendly machining process, the dry grinding has lately become a subject of special interests. Despite its ecological and economic advantages, dry grinding process has not been widely introduced into industrial environment. The main reason is the high heat generation in the grinding contact zone and high energy partition transferred to the workpiece in the process. In order to solve this problem, a novel and promising concept using the structured grinding wheels has been developed. With 60% structuring of a grinding wheel, 50% reduction in grinding forces and over 40% reduction in the workpiece temperature were achieved in dry condition. The lower heat flux and lower specific energy led to a significant reduction in thermal damages to the workpiece, as well. The effects are contributed to the fact that structuring the grinding wheels lowers the number of static and dynamic grains and therefore, the maximum chip thickness increases. The increased chip thickness results in reduced specific grinding energy. Despite the advantages achieved with structured wheels, a higher wear of the structured wheels is a disadvantage associated with the structuring of grinding wheels. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.