Experimental Study of SiC Ceramic Grinding Subsurface Cracks

Abstract

Silicon carbide ceramics with its excellent physical and mechanical properties have become the preferred material for space large diameter mirror. Diamond wheel grinding is the main way of SiC ceramics forming processing. Subsurface cracks is generated due to the high hardness and brittleness of the material after grinding. In order to remove the impact of cracks, poishing processing with very low efficiency is applied, so it is significant to control the depth of silicon carbide ceramic grinding subsurface cracks and shorten the processing cycle.In this paper grinding experiment of SiC ceramic is conducted. The method of cross-section polishing combined with scanning electron microscope observation is used to research grinding subsurface cracks. The depth of broken surface layer and the maximum depth of sub-surface cracks were proposed to evaluate the grinding subsurface cracks. The result show broken surface layer depth and the maximum depth of sub-surface cracks increase with the decreasement of spindle speed, and increasement of feed rate and grinding depth.