An investigation of the grinding wheel wear with the use of root-mean-square value of acoustic emission

This paper presents the results of an investigation of the grinding wheel wear in a peripheral surface grinding process. During this investigation varying geometrical parameters of an active grinding wheel surface have been measured and the components of the grinding force and acoustic emission signal have been recorded. On the basis of these output quantities an analysis has been conducted of an acoustic emission descriptor's practicability, i.e. a root-mean-square (RMS) value, to characterize the cutting abilities of a grinding wheel in the time progress of its work. This article also presents a new energy coefficient, which determines the rate of grinding wheel wear in the form of a RMS value of acoustic emission signal falling on a contact surface of a grinding wheel. Moreover, the article presents some examples of a correlation between the root-mean-square value of acoustic emission signal and the surface roughness of a workpiece, which shows that the parameters of acoustic emission signal can be a useful tool to monitor the surface roughness during the grinding process.