Wheel Loading in Grinding

Accumulation of chips in the space between grains on the surface of the grinding wheel, known as wheel loading, is responsible for several deleterious effects in industrial grinding operations such as reduction in wheel life associated with increased cutting forces, increased power consumption, thermal damage, and tolerance variations in the process. In addition, they are also important to many aspects of grinding process optimization, monitoring, and control. Taking into account the major technological importance of this subject to the production of functional and structural components used in high performance systems, it is often desired to estimate the wheel loading for maintaining not only the productivity but also the desired surface integrity. The success of this approach, however, requires the fundamental understanding of the grinding wheel loading on the microstructural scale. The study presented here provides valuable insights into the grinding wheel loading mechanism and the dependence of wheel loading on machining conditions and mechanical properties of workpiece material in grinding.