Investigation on high-shear and low-pressure grinding characteristics for zirconia ceramics using newly developed flexible abrasive tool

Abstract

Zirconia ceramics is widely employed in medical, chemical and aerospace domain due to its excellent combination of physical and chemical attributes. However, high hardness and brittleness property have limited its application in manufacturing industries. Therefore, the present work aimed at development of a flexible abrasive tool based on concept of liquid body armor with large ratio of tangential grinding force to normal grinding force in order to enhance the surface processing quality of zirconia ceramics. A flexible body-armor-like abrasive tool was developed. Fundamental dynamic simulation and micro material removal processing at high-shear and low-pressure grinding conditions was analyzed. A multi-group of grinding experiments were carried out on an industrial robot platform for zirconia ceramic workpieces to validate the grinding performance of flexible body-armor-like abrasive tool. The surface roughness, surface morphology, grinding force and grinding temperature were investigated. At the optimal grinding condition, the surface roughness (Ra) of the workpiece was reduced by 91.8% and decreased from 110 nm to 9 nm. The scratches from the surface of the workpiece vanished and uniform grinding textures were left. The experimental results revealed that the developed flexible body-armor-like abrasive tool could achieve ultra-precision grinding of zirconia ceramics.