Analysis and measurement of effective flow-rate in flood grinding

In the grinding process, grinding fluid is delivered for the purposes of chip flushing, cooling, lubrication and chemical protection of work surface. Due to high speed rotating grinding wheel, the boundary layer of air around the grinding wheel restricts most of the grinding fluid away from the grinding zone. Hence, conventional method of delivering grinding fluid that flood delivery is not believed to fully penetrate this boundary layer and, thus, the majority of the grinding fluid is deflected away from the grinding zone. The flood grinding typically delivers large volumes of grinding fluid was ineffective, especially under high speed grinding conditions. In the paper, a theoretical model is presented for flow of grinding fluid through the grinding zone. The model shows that the flow rate through the contact zone between the wheel and the work surface depends on wheel porosity and wheel speed as well as depends on nozzle volumetric flow rate and fluid jet velocity. Furthermore, the model was tested by a surface grinding machine in order to correlate between experiment and theory. Consequently, the effective flow-rate model was found to give a good description of the experimental results and the model can well forecast the effective flow-rate in flood delivery grinding.