Title: Wear of silicon carbide wheel during grinding of intermetallic titanium aluminide

Authors: Nithin Tom Mathew; L. Vijayaraghavan

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Work Integrated Learning Program Division, BITS Pilani, Rajasthan 333031, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering Section, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, 600036, India

Abstract: An experimental investigation is reported on the wear of silicon carbide wheel and its influence on the wheel topography and grinding behaviour during the surface grinding of high performance intermetallic gamma titianium aluminide. The radial wear of the wheel was characterised by initial transient state followed by a steady state wear regime and finally a steel rise in wear rate. The initial transient region progressed up to a radial wear of 40 μm. The normal and tangential forces remained approximately constant up to about 25 μm wheel wear and subsequently progressively increased to a maximum at 60 μm wear. The specific energy began approximately at about u = 140 J/mm³ and started progressing beyond radial wear of 25 μm and increased up to 600 J/mm³ at wear of 60 μm. There was high initial roughness value with the fresh wheel with a progressive decrease with continued grinding. There was noticeable increase in roughness value after a radial wear of 60 μm. With the progress of wear there was presence of surface burns, chatter marks and cracking. The presence of blue oxide discoloration was observed during the visual inspection signifying the generation of reasonably high temperature.

Keywords: wear; grinding; silicon carbide; titanium aluminide; force; surface; integrity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMM.2020.105663

International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials, 2020 Vol.22 No.2, pp.122 - 136

Received: 05 Nov 2018
Accepted: 04 Jan 2019
Published online: 09 Mar 2020 *

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