Effect of Contact Stiffness of Grinding Wheel on Ground Surface Roughness and Residual Stock Removal of Workpiece

In the grinding operation, grinding wheels are deformed by grinding forces, so that residual stock removal of the workpiece takes place. Since this residual stock removal of the workpiece causes low machining efficiency and deterioration of machining accuracy, high hardness grinding wheels may be selected in order to obtain high machining efficiency and/or high quality machining accuracy. On the other hand, when grinding operations used by low hardness grinding wheels are carried out, it is well known that ground surface roughness is smaller than in case of higher hardness grinding wheels. From such a viewpoint, this study aims to investigate experimentally the effect of the contact stiffness of grinding wheel on the ground surface roughness and the residual stock removal of the workpiece. Grinding operations were carried out using three grinding wheels which are different hardness type, and ground surface roughness and residual stock removal of the workpiece were measured. The contact stiffness of grinding wheel was calculated by a support stiffness of single abrasive grain and a contact area between grinding wheel and workpiece. Comparing the contact stiffness of grinding wheel with the ground surface roughness and the residual stock removal of the workpiece, it was known that ground surface roughness increases and residual stock removal of workpiece decreases with increaseing the contact stiffness of grinding wheel. From these results, since elastic deformation of the grinding wheel changed depending on the suppot stiffness of single abrasive grain, it was clarified that the ground surface roughness and the residual stock removal of the workpiece were changed by the contact stiffness of grinding wheel.