Effects of Actively Cooled Coolant for Grinding Ductile Materials

Abstract

An active cooling approach for coolant during ductile material grinding is proposed and examined. The aim is to enhance surface quality and to enhance productivity. The problem associated with the cryogenic cooling approach and the one with the chilled air approach are addressed. An active cooling prototype was developed utilizing a compact heat pump design, which is easy to use, movable, and can be easily fitted into different type of machine designs with relatively low costs. The system is based on the use of forced convection of the heat generated during the machining process. Experimental and computational studies of the effects of actively cooled coolant for grinding ductile materials are carried out. The experimental results show that the use of actively cooled coolant is able to improve surface quality by up to 29.95% on average in terms of surface roughness Ra. Computational testing results show that the heat can be taken away more effectively by using the proposed approach. The results of optical and SEM examinations also confirmed that the proposed approach is advantageous.

Review on grinding-induced residual stresses in metallic materials

“…Additionally, Gao et al [147][148][149] developed an active cooling and activation approach for coolant, which was more advantageous on reducing the grinding temperature and therefore obtaining lower surface residual stress in comparison with the passive coolant cooling method.…”

Actively Cooled and Activated Coolant for Grinding Brittle Materials

“…An active cooling and activation system was established based on forced convection of heat [9][10][11][12]. High frequency activation [7,8] was also used.…”

“…1. With a compact heat pump, this system can provide coolant with a steady low temperature [9][10][11][12]. The cold cutting fluid was activated by high frequency vibration and delivered through a nozzle, which can help the coolant to be delivered [7,8] more effectively into the grinding zone to take the heat away.…”

“…Although many cooling methods have been used for the grinding process to solve the problem of high temperature, a common problem is that the heat convection by coolant needs a long period of time to achieve an equilibrium state [9][10][11][12]. Prior to the equilibrium state, the temperature increases continuously, which results in errors in the machining process and instability in the production output [13].…”

A Preliminary Study of Variable Strength Activation of Coolant for Precision Machining

“…A number of methods have been proposed for cooling [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. For increased cooling effectiveness, active cooling and activated cooling have been proposed and examined [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”