Experimental validation of numerical thermal models for dry grinding

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to experimentally validate numerical thermal models of the dry grinding manufacturing processes. Two models were developed: one for low depths of cut that ignored the effects of the contact angle, referred to as the shallow grinding model, and one for large depths of cut that included the effects of the contact angle, referred to as the deep grinding model. Both of the models were developed using the commercial finite element package ANSYS and were then compared to in-process temperatures acquired with a full-field infrared video camera. The comparison showed that the numerical models were capable of accurately predicting the shape and intensity of the temperature contours of the infrared images as well as temperature profiles extracted form the images within a margin of error of approximately 9–17%. The results also showed that the shallow grinding model was more precise at small depths of cut while the deep grinding model was more precise at larger depths of cut and that there was a clear transition region where both models performed equally well. The thermal partition ratios used in the numerical models were initially calculated using existing analytical models and refined using a temperature matching technique between the temperature measurements and the numerical models. It was found that during shallow grinding the analytical models were able to predict the actual thermal partition ratios within an average error of 5.7%, while during deep grinding the average error increased to approximately 13.4%.