High Efficiency, High Speed Grinding of a Composite Material Consisting of Polymer Concrete and Steel Structures

Abstract

Polymer concrete (PC) displays superb vibration dampening qualities and is dimensionally and thermally stable, dense, rigid, resistant to water and chemicals and will not twist or bend in reaction to stress. Therefore PC has become the preferred base to ensure rigidity in a machine tool. Hybrid polymer concrete beds composed of steel structures and polymer concrete are challenging for the grinding process, due to the completely different material properties of steel and PC. Which complicates the selection of suitable grinding tool and limits the achievable material removal rates. A promising technique to overcome these technological constraints is the use of High Efficiency Deep Grinding (HEDG), where high cutting speeds and material removal rates are utilized. This paper presents the experimental investigation of HEDG of a hybrid material consisting of polymer concrete and integrated steel inserts. A vitrified bond CBN-grinding wheel was utilized and the grinding parameters are optimized in this study. The obtained results show that the application of HEDG can increase the material removal rates considerably. There was no evidence of thermal damages on the surface and subsurface of ground workpieces. The microscopic studies of the induced chips by the HEDG process showed, that both brittle and ductile grinding modes occur during the applied HEDG process.