Investigation of the surface generation mechanism of mechanical polishing engineering ceramics using discrete element method

Abstract

Machining technology about ceramics has been developed very fast over recent years due to the growing industrial demand of higher machining accuracy and better surface quality of ceramic elements, while the nature of hard and brittle ceramics makes it difficult to acquire damage-free and ultra-smooth surface. Ceramic bulk can be treated as an assemblage of discrete particles bonded together randomly as the micro-structure of ceramics consists of crystal particles and pores, and the inter-granular fracture of the ceramics can be naturally represented by the separation of particles due to breakage of bonds. Discrete element method (DEM) provides a promising approach for constructing an effective model to describe the tool–workpiece interaction and can serve as a predicting simulation tool in analyzing the complicated surface generation mechanism and is employed in this research to simulate the mechanical polishing process of ceramics and surface integrity. In this work, a densely packed particle assembly system of the polycrystalline Si3N4 has been generated using bonded-particle model to represent the ceramic workpiece numerically. The simulation results justify that the common critical depth of cut cannot be used as the effective parameters for evaluating brittle to ductile transformation in ceramic polishing process. Therefore, a generalized criterion of defining the range of ductile regime machining has been developed based on the numerical results. Furthermore, different distribution of pressure chain is observed with different depth of cut which ought to have intense relationship with special structure of ceramics. This study also justified the advantage of DEM model in its capability of revealing the mechanical behaviors of ceramics at micro-scale.