Ceramics International
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ceramint
A R T I C L E I N F O A BS T RAC T
Keywords: To reveal the eects of the grinding parameters on the ground surface quality of silicon nitride grinding to guide
Silicon nitride processing for improving the processing accuracy and productivity, orthogonal experiments on silicon nitride
Grinding grinding are carried out by a diamond grinding wheel, and the eects are studied systematically. The inuences
Orthogonal experiment of the grinding parameters, such as the grain size, wheel speed, workpiece speed and grinding depth, are
Surface quality
analysed regarding their eects on the grinding force, surface morphology, surface roughness and subsurface
damage. The undeformed chip thickness and equivalent chip thickness are also studied to provide a
comprehensive analysis of the ground surface quality. The quality and eectiveness of silicon nitride grinding
can be improved by optimizing the grinding parameters according to this study.
1. Introduction grinding. The results showed that the average abrasive grain size of the
diamond wheel had the main inuence on the surface quality, while the
As a typical engineering ceramic, silicon nitride (Si3N4) ceramic has inuence of the wheel speed and feed rate were secondary. Li et al. [7]
been widely used in aerospace, national defence and other important carried out studies to determine the material removal rate of Si3N4
industrial areas for its excellent qualities of high strength, high during single-pass grinding. The results suggested that there was an
hardness, wear resistance, high-temperature resistance and chemical optimum depth of cut that yielded the greatest material removal rate. If
resistance [1,2]. Grinding with superhard ne abrasives is the most the grinding depth is larger than this optimum depth of cut, premature
common method used for engineering ceramic machining [3]. dulling of the diamond wheel occurs, and the grinding surface quality
However, the materials high hardness and brittleness often induce of the Si3N4 drastically decreases. Agarwal [810] conducted a study
residual stresses, plastic deformation, micro-cracks, and subsurface for a high removal rate and studied the eects of various parameters on
cracks, which have negative eects on the mechanical properties and the surface quality of silicon carbide grinding using a diamond grinding
largely restrict their development and application. wheel. The results indicated that the material removal was primarily
Despite various research eorts in engineering ceramic grinding due to microfracture and grain dislodgement, and the parameters of
over the past two decades, much needs to be accomplished to under- the depth of cut, feed rate, grit size and grit density were the primary
stand the grinding characteristics and to characterize the machining inuencing factors that aect the surface integrity. Qiao et al. [14]
damage and the mechanism of material removal [416]. Therefore, it is investigated the inuence of machining parameters on the surface
essential to evaluate the eects of the grinding surface quality. roughness in the ultrasonic vibration mill-grinding of hot-pressed
The ecient grinding of engineering ceramic requires the judicious Si3N4. The detected results indicated that the spindle speed had the
selection of machining parameters to maximize the removal rate while most signicant inuence on the surface roughness, followed by the
controlling the surface quality [4]. Huang et al. [5] investigated the feed speed, cutting depth and amplitude in turn. Jing et al. [15]
eect of the grinding wheel speed on the material removal mechanism investigated the cutting force of face machining with conventional
and ground surface quality. The results showed that the eect of the grinding and rotary ultrasonic grinding machining (RUGM). The
grinding wheel speed on the ground surface quality was insignicant experimental results showed that the cutting force of RUGM was
for a grinding wheel of a large grain size, but the ground surfaces approximately 25% less than that of conventional grinding for face
exhibited a predominantly ductile ow and were signicantly inu- machining, and the ground surface quality could be improved. Wang
enced by the grinding wheel speed when using a wheel with a small et al. [16] presented an optimization model to choose proper machin-
grain size. Chen et al. [6] investigated and analyzed the factors that ing parameters for the ultrasonic vibration assisted grinding of Si3N4
inuence the surface quality of brittle materials during ultra-precision and explained the principles of the improvement of the grinding force
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: lw1986tiger@163.com (W. Liu).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2016.10.135
Received 17 June 2016; Received in revised form 30 August 2016; Accepted 19 October 2016
Available online 22 October 2016
0272-8842/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.
W. Liu et al. Ceramics International 43 (2017) 15711577
Table 1 Table 2
The properties of the Si3N4 workpiece used in the experiment. The grinding conditions.
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Table 3
The experiment parameters and results.
No. Factor a Factor b Factor c Factor d Tangential force (N/mm) Normal force (N/mm) Surface roughness (m) Subsurface damage depth (m)
vw ap
agmax = AB = 2
vs ds (1)
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vw
aep = ap
vs (2)
face damage depth and grinding parameters. The equivalent chip 3.5. Experimental verication
thickness aep can be considered as a modied depth of cut, and it
may be visualized as the thickness of the stream of material emitted According to the discussion above, a special experiment on Si3N4
from the contact zone by the grinding wheel as illustrated in Fig. 9. The grinding was performed, where the grain size, wheel speed, workpiece
equivalent chip thickness aep can be calculated as follow [2]: speed and grinding depth were 400 #, 31.4 m/s, 20 mm/s and 2 m,
respectively. It could be calculated that the equivalent chip thickness
obtained from these grinding conditions was the smallest. Then
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37.6m
12.2m
10.5m
3.8m
Grinding wheel
vs
O O
vw
A
ap
B
Fig. 7. The subsurface damage depth of the ground Si3N4 by range analysis.
Workpiece
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Grinding wheel
vs vs
aep
ap
vw
Workpiece
Fig. 11. The subsurface damage depth of the ground Si3N4 versus the equivalent chip
thickness.
2) In Si3N4 grinding, the grinding force is less than 15 N/mm and the
grinding force ratio is between 5 and 12, which is in accordance
with the grinding characteristic of brittle material. The normal force
plays a major role in the grinding force. As the number of the grain
size increases, the tangential force signicantly increases, which is
helpful for material removal in grinding.
3) There are numerous visible grinding grooves on the surface ground
by the diamond grinding wheel. When using a 40 # grinding wheel,
there are large pits in the ground surface. As the number of grain
size increases, the grinding grooves become thin, dense and
shallow, and the quantity and area of the pits are reduced. This
reects the trend of material removal from brittle to plastic.
4) The grinding parameters have similar inuence on the surface
roughness and subsurface damage depth of the ground Si3N4. With
increasing grain size and wheel speed, the surface roughness and
subsurface damage depth decrease, while they increase with
increasing workpiece speed and grinding depth. The essence is
the change in the maximum undeformed chip thickness of the grain
and equivalent chip thickness.
Fig. 10. The surface roughness of the ground Si3N4 versus the equivalent chip thickness. 5) As the grinding force and surface roughness are easy to detectthe
variation of the subsurface damage depth can be obtained by
grinding results for the tangential force, normal force, surface rough- analysing the change tendencies of the grinding force and surface
ness and subsurface damage were 0.178 N/mm, 1.126 N/mm, roughness. Therefore, with some preventive optimization of the
0.186 m and 1.5 m, respectively, which were smaller than the results grinding parameters according to this paper, the grinding quality
in the orthogonal experiment, and the surface morphology of the and eciency of ground Si3N4 can be improved, and these results
ground Si3N4 was also better. The special experiment results indicate were veried by a special experiment regarding Si3N4 grinding.
that the analysis in this study could accurately improve the quality of
the Si3N4 grinding. Acknowledgments
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