Kinematic simulation of the uncut chip thickness and surface finish using a reduced set of 3D grinding wheel measurements

This paper combined experimentally-measured grinding wheel topography data taken around the entire circumference of the grinding wheel with a kinematic simulation of the grinding process. Several new methods were developed in order to create the resulting high-fidelity and computationally-efficient simulation. First a novel peak-removal technique was developed and applied to effectively remove erroneous peaks in the raw wheel topography data. Next a method was found to determine only the active cutting points on the wheel model by considering the kinematics of the grinding process. This new approach was able to reduce the simulation time from over twelve hours to about four seconds without losing any information about the cutting edge-workpiece interaction. The resulting predicted workpiece surface was then experimentally validated by carrying out a grinding experiment using the same grinding wheel used to develop the grinding wheel computer model and then measuring the resulting workpiece surface profile. Good agreement between simulated and experimental workpiece profiles was observed. Finally, the validated simulator was used to develop a kinematically-exact method to calculate the maximum uncut chip thickness and the simulation results were investigated for different depths of cut, wheel speeds and workpiece feeds.