Surface roughness and thermo-mechanical force modeling for grinding operations with regular and circumferentially grooved wheels

A thermo-mechanical model is developed to predict forces in grinding with circumferentially grooved and regular (non-grooved) wheels. The geometric properties of the grinding wheel grits needed in the modeling are determined individually through optical measurements where the surface topography of the wheel and kinematic trajectories of each grain are obtained to determine the uncut chip thickness per grit and predict the final surface profile of the workpiece. The contact length between the abrasive wheel and the workpiece is identified with the thermocouple measurement method. In this approach, a few calibration tests with a regular wheel are performed to obtain sliding friction coefficient as a function of grinding speed for a particular wheel-workpiece pair. Once the wheel topography and sliding friction coefficient are identified it has been found that it is possible to predict cutting forces and surface roughness by the presented material and kinematic models. Theoretical results are compared with experimental data in terms of surface roughness and force predictions where good agreement is observed.