A Grinding Wheel of Self-Lubrication with Solid Powder Lubricant and Centrifugal Impeller for Green Grinding Process of TC4 Alloy

Abstract

A new self-lubrication concept based on the techniques including of dry grinding and solid lubricating was proposed for green grinding process. And a kind of self-lubrication grinding wheel was designed with solid powder lubricant and centrifugal impeller inside. The self-lubricating was achieved by the blow out of the solid powder lubricant from the inner cavity of the wheel by the centrifugal force to the grinding surface. The experiments were conducted to study the friction and wear properties of the new cylindrical wheel samples manufactured by the proposed concept. The results showed that the flow channel diameters of 1 to 1.5 mm are the best for the blowing out of the solid lubricant to realize the continuous lubricating. After grinding, the surface coating is even, and the sizes of the abrasive particles are relatively uniform with no peeling into blocks. Although there is a certain wear loss of the grinding surface, the wear rate of the particles on the sample wheels is less than that of the traditional grinding wheel. The computational simulation of the self-lubrication wheel is conducted with the RSM method with FLUENT software to analyze the flow field in the wheel cavity of solid lubricant inside, which is meaningful for the study of the motion of the solid lubricant and useful for optimum design of the wheel design to realize the best self-lubricating performance.