Thermal modelling and experimental evaluation of laser-assisted dressing of superabrasive grinding wheels

Abstract

Laser-assisted dressing (LAD) has been proposed to prepare efficiently superabrasive grinding wheels by significantly reducing dressing forces and dresser wear. In this paper, a transient, three-dimensional heat transfer model is presented for LAD of superabrasive grinding wheels, where the effective thermophysical properties of the porous heterogeneous wheel are calculated and applied to the thermal model. Temperature measurements are conducted with an infrared camera and the excellent agreement between the measured and predicted temperatures show the validation of the present model for LAD of grinding wheels or, generally, laser-assisted machining of composite materials. To evaluate the influence of LAD on superabrasive wheels, grinding tests were carried out using a CBN wheel prepared by conventional and laser-assisted dressing respectively. The grinding tests show that LAD under proper conditions could improve the performance of CBN wheels.