Determination of grain engagement based on real 3D wheel topography for modelling forces and surface during silicon carbide grinding

The applications of advanced ceramics such as Silicon carbide (SiC) or Silicon-SiC (Si-SiC) are widely developed in electronic, automotive and aerospace. The grinding of such hard and brittle materials remains challenging in terms of efficiency, accuracy and surface integrity. Grinding process involves the simultaneous interaction of multiple cutting edges with random geometries. The grain engagement is used to analyse and model the forces generated. The uncut chip thickness is difficult to determine in the case of grinding due to the uncertainty of the grain shapes, sizes and positions. This study presents a new method to simulate the interaction between each grain of the grinding wheel and the workpiece through the evaluation of the uncut chip thickness. Firstly, the real 3D topography of the electroplated diamond grinding wheel is measured using a focus-variation microscope. Then, the uncut chip thickness for each grain is calculated using this tool topography. The results coming from the simulation are used to evaluate forces generated during the grinding process. Finally, the results from the simulation are compared with experimental measurements on SiC material grinding.