Title: Appropriate application of pneumatic barrier for improving grinding performance

Authors: Bijoy Mandal; Santanu Das; Simul Banerjee

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani-741235, West Bengal, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani-741235, West Bengal, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal, India

Abstract: High grinding zone temperature is the primary reason behind several grinding defects. To control thermal defects, usually large quantity of grinding fluid is employed. However, much of applied grinding fluid is reported to be wasted because of the development of a stiff air layer surrounding the rotating wheel. In the present experimental work, an indigenously introduced setup utilising a pneumatic barrier is used for controlling the adverse effect of stiff air layer formed around the grinding wheel. Different parameters of the pneumatic barrier setup are optimised by using response surface methodology (RSM). Further, experiments are performed in surface grinding with the provision of pneumatic barrier. It is observed that applying conventional grinding fluid by providing the pneumatic barrier at optimised condition, tangential and normal force components are reduced significantly, and favourable grinding chips and good ground surface is generated in comparison with the conventionally used flood cooling.

Keywords: grinding fluids; air layer; response surface methodology; RSM; pneumatic barrier; grinding chips; surface roughness; grinding forces; ground surface; flood cooling nozzle; pneumatic barrier nozzle; surface quality; grinding zone temperature; grinding defects; thermal defects.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAT.2015.070581

International Journal of Abrasive Technology, 2015 Vol.7 No.1, pp.26 - 45

Received: 03 Feb 2015
Accepted: 04 Apr 2015
Published online: 10 Jul 2015 *

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