Evaluation of surface topography of SiCp/Al composite in grinding

Abstract

As the main processing technique of SiCp/Al composite, grinding directly affects usability performance. However, cavity defects usually occur during the SiCp/Al grinding process. In this study, the surface micro-topography of SiCp/Al composite in grinding was observed by means of SEM, and the chemical ingredients over the cavity defect surface were analyzed by energy dispersive spectrometry. The surface topography was reconstructed with bilinear interpolation algorithm by a point cloud, and the contour map including cavity defects was obtained. Based on the contour map including cavity defects, a new relationship curve between the projection area ratio and contour height was proposed. A novel comprehensive evaluation system was established and included four aspects, namely the profile height and surface roughness of the entire topography, profile height, and equivalent surface roughness of the cavity defect. The optimized algorithm was proposed with the objective function of maximum grinding efficiency and constraints of profile height and surface roughness. The optimized grinding process parameters were obtained and verification experiments were carried out. The results demonstrated that the predicted results were consistent with the experimental results, and the comprehensive evaluation system including cavity defects can reflect the surface topography intuitively. The comprehensive evaluation system for the surface topography including cavity defects in grinding provides guidance for the usability performance of SiCp/Al composite.