Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200

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Precision Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/precision

Grinding temperature and power consumption in high speed grinding of T

Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy with a vitrified CBN wheel
⁎
Chen-Wei Daia,b, Wen-Feng Dinga, , Ye-Jun Zhua, Jiu-Hua Xua, Hai-Wu Yub
a
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, PR China
b
Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changzhou, 213164, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: As a kind of typical difficult-to-cut metallic material, Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy has been widely ap-
High speed grinding plied in aero-engines. High speed grinding experiments of Inconel 718 have been carried out using a vitrified
Vitrified CBN wheel cubic boron nitride (CBN) superabrasive wheel in the current study. The effects of wheel speed vs on grinding
Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy temperature and power consumption were investigated. Meanwhile, the grinding performance was also analyzed
Grinding temperature
from the viewpoint of undeformed chip thickness. The results obtained show that, the minimum grinding forces
Power consumption
and specific grinding energy are obtained at vs of 120 m/s and the grinding temperature is less than 100 °C at this
moment. The lost grinding power reaches the maximum value when vs is 140 m/s, which accounts for about
55%–65% of the total grinding power; however, the minimum values, such as about 20%–30%, are obtained at a
conventional wheel speed. Finally, the wheel speeds in grinding Inconel 718 are optimized at 100–120 m/s
under the given experimental conditions, with which not only the surface roughness Ra below 0.4 μm is ob-
tained, but also the distorted lattice or elongated grain cannot be formed in the ground surface/subsurface layer.

1. Introduction
Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy has good comprehensive per-
formance in strength, corrosion resistance and fatigue resistance, which
contributes its wide application in aero-engines. However, it is also a
kind of typical difficult-to-cut metallic material. Poor grindability, low
machining efficiency and high machining cost are always the primary
problems in grinding nickel-based superalloy due to their weak heat
conductivity, great thermal stability, and high temperature plasticity
[1–6]. The characteristics in grinding Inconel 718 are usually as fol-
lows: high grinding temperature, large power consumption, and
therefore poor ground surface integrity. For these reasons, in order to
produce a better ground surface quality, it’s very important to develop
an effective way to decrease grinding temperature and reduce power
consumption in grinding.
In the past decades, much investigation on the grindability of nickel-
based superalloy, just like other difficult-to-cut materials [7–11], has been
conducted using conventional alumina abrasive wheels or at conventional
wheel speeds. For example, Chen et al. [12], Österle et al. [13] and Xu
et al. [14,15] carried out grinding experiments of nickel-based superalloy,
respectively, and studied the influence of grinding temperature on tool
wear, grinding burn, material removal behavior and surface integrity.
Additionally, Huddedar et al. [1] and Liu et al. [16,17] have concluded
that the grinding force was always very large, and the tool wear was also
serious when grinding nickel-based superalloy.
On the other hand, due to the excellent properties in thermal con-
ductivity and heat resistance, CBN superabrasives have been widely used
in grinding [18–24]. Investigations of grinding force, grinding temperature
and grinding power were also conducted when grinding nickel-based su-
peralloy with CBN wheels at conventional speeds [2–4,25–27]. It has been
found that, the CBN wheels possess better machining performance than
the conventional alumina wheels in the grinding of nickel-based super-
alloy. Furthermore, some investigations show that high speed grinding
(upper than 80 m/s) with CBN wheels can acquire higher material re-
moval rate, smoother surface and longer tool life in comparison to the
conventional speed grinding operation [28,29].
In particular, compared with conventional speed grinding, high
speed grinding promotes a larger pressure in the wheel-workpiece
contact zone. Under such conditions, the total grinding power would be
increased because of the attacking on the wheel from the coolant,
which greatly decreases the utilization of power or energy [30]. Ac-
cording to the published literatures on temperature models in grinding
[31–35], it has been known that the grinding temperature is in pro-
portion to the heat flux and power consumption during grinding. Fur-
thermore, Guo et al. [25] and Ghosh et al. [36,37] considered that the
grinding power per unit width is made up of chip formation energy,

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dingwf2000@vip.163.com (W.-F. Ding).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precisioneng.2017.12.005
Received 24 September 2017; Received in revised form 1 December 2017; Accepted 5 December 2017
Available online 07 December 2017
0141-6359/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
C.-W. Dai et al. Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200

Table 1
Chemical composition of Inconel 718 (wt.%).

Elements Ni Cr Nb Mo Ti Al Co Si Mn Cu C P Fe

wt.% 53.4 18.8 5.27 2.99 1.02 0.50 0.17 0.12 0.07 0.07 0.03 0.01 Bal

Table 2 2.2. Experimental set-up

Mechanical properties of Inconel 718.
The experimental system is shown in Figs. 1 and 2. At the same
Contents Values
time, the grinding conditions are summarized in Table 3. Surface
Density, ρ (kg/m3) 8280 grinding trials were performed on a PROFIMAT MT 408 high-speed
Yield strength, σ0.2 (MPa) 1260 surface grinder. A vitrified CBN wheel in width of 20 mm and in dia-
Tensile strength, σb (MPa) 1430 meter of 400 mm was applied. The workpiece samples were 60 mm in
Elongation, σ5 (%) 24
length, 30 mm in height and 5 mm in width. And the actual grinding
Shrinkage, ψ (%) 40
Toughness, ak (J/cm2) 40 width is 5 mm.
Down-grinding at a fixed depth of cut (ap = 0.1 mm) is chosen in all
the grinding trials. The wheel speed vs is varied from 20 to 140 m/s, and
sliding energy and plowing energy, which is mainly determined by the the workpiece infeed speed vw is ranged from 120 to 300 mm/min.
grinding forces. Thus, it is necessary to investigate the power con- Particularly, the wheel speeds of 20 and 50 m/s are chosen for the
sumption in high speed grinding by taking into accounts of the grinding conventional speed grinding, while those of 80, 100, 120 and 140 m/s
forces, grinding temperature and the power lost (taken away by the are applied for high speed grinding. During grinding, a water retaining
bearing friction, the air friction and the machine vibration). plate has been employed in the grinding forces measuring process in
As mentioned above, it’s known that CBN wheels and high wheel order to improve the measurement accuracy. Thus, the effect of coolant
speed have great potentials in grinding nickel-based superalloy. on the measured force can be eliminated with the plate. Before each
Nevertheless, the previous experimental investigation on grinding this grinding trial, a diamond roller has been used to conduct the inter-
kind of material is mainly concentrated on the conventional speed mittent dressing.
grinding. Therefore, in the current work, high speed grinding experi- A Kistler 9272 dynamometer has been used to measure the tan-
ments of Inconel 718 are carried out using vitrified CBN superabrasive gential and normal grinding forces, Ft and Fn, which was attached with
wheels. The influences of wheel speed on the grinding temperature and a Kistler 5070A10100 amplifier. The corresponding natural frequencies
power consumption are studied. Meanwhile, they are also discussed for Ft and Fn were 3.1 kHz and 6.3 kHz, respectively. A sampling fre-
from the viewpoint of maximum undeformed chip thickness. Finally, quency of 2000 Hz and a cut-off frequency of 100 Hz have also been
the surface quality obtained at the optimum grinding parameters is used. A semi thermocouple has been applied to measure the grinding
analyzed. temperature. The specimen involves a constantan foil and two mica
sheets. The constantan foil of 0.02 mm thickness is sandwiched be-
2. Experimental materials and details tween thermocouples of workpiece and is insulated by two mica sheets.
A hot junction for a constantan-workpiece semi-artificial thermocouple
2.1. Workpiece material is made in the grinding contact zone. The workpiece far-end is regarded
as the cold end and the other end of the constantan foil was attached to
The workpiece material is Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy, a data acquisition card. The thermal electromotive force (Emf) was,
whose composition is listed in Table 1 [5], and the mechanical prop- therefore, formed and measured using a computer, and then used to
erties is listed in Table 2 [38]. calculate the temperature. Besides, a Load Controls PPC-3 power meter

Fig. 1. Schematics of the experimental set-up.

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C.-W. Dai et al. Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200

Fig. 2. Grinding experimental scene.

surface, the roughness was measured three times. Finally, the me-
Table 3
Grinding conditions. tallurgical structure of the ground workpiece surface cross-section was
characterized by a KH-7700 three-dimensional optical microscope.
Contents Values
2.3. Definition and calculation of the maximum undeformed chip thickness
Grinding mode Plunge surface grinding, down cut
Grinding wheel Vitrified bond CBN wheel, 80/100 US mesh, hmax
vsmax = 160m/s, concentration 150%
Wheel speed vs(m/s) 20 and 50 m/s for conventional speed The maximum undeformed chip thickness (in this article using un-
grinding; deformed chip thickness for short) hmax, displayed in Fig. 3, is an im-
80, 100, 120 and 140 m/s for high speed
grinding
portant parameter that directly affects the single grain load and can be
Workpiece infeed speed 120, 180, 240, 300 defined as [39]:
vw(mm/min) 1/2 1/2 1/4
Depth of cut ap (mm) 0.1 h max = ⎛
⎜
3 cot α ⎞
⎟
⎛ vw ⎞
⎜ ⎟
⎛ ap ⎞
⎜ ⎟

Grinding width b (mm) 5 ⎝ Ca ⎠ ⎝ vs ⎠ ⎝ ds ⎠ (1)

Cooling Water-based coolant, 12 bar
Workpiece material Inconel 718 Nickel-based superalloy where α = 60° is often used as the semi-included angle of a single grain,
Size of workpiece blocks 60mm(L) × 5mm(W) × 30mm(H) Ca is the density of active grains along the wheel (in this work, Ca = 9.5
Dresser Diamond roller
grains/mm2) and ds = 400 mm is the equivalent wheel diameter.
Overlapping ratio Ud 1
Depth of dressing cut aed (mm) 0.005
Dressing speed ratio qd 0.8 3. Experimental results and discussion
Peripheral speed of the grinding 22.5
wheel vsd(m/s) 3.1. Grinding temperature and heat conducted into ground workpiece
Tip radius of dresser bd (mm) 0.25
Dressing mode Down dressing
During grinding, the workpiece usually suffers rapid thermal cycles,
which greatly affects the ground surface [40]. Measuring of the
has been used to measure the grinding power. The measured signals of grinding temperature is an active way to evaluate the heat conducted
grinding force, temperature and power were sent to a dynamic signal into the workpiece. Before grinding experiments, a semi thermocouple
recorder (LabVIEW). Additionally, a roughness tester (Mahr has been calibrated. The semi thermocouple under calibrated is made
Perthometer M1) was used to measure the surfaces roughness with a up of constantan and Inconel718 material, which can be used to si-
cut-off length 1.75 mm and a reference length 5 mm. For each ground mulate the thermocouple in grinding. An electric stove has been used to
control the calibration temperature. A potentiometer has been applied

Fig. 3. Schematic of the undeformed chip thickness in grinding.

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C.-W. Dai et al.
Fig. 4. Calibration of the semi thermocouple.
to measure the thermal electromotive force (Emf) of a standard ther-
mocouple and a semi thermocouple under test. Then the calibration
curve of the semi thermocouple can be obtained, as displayed in Fig. 4,
and the temperature rise is fitted as follows:
ΔT = − 0.0482u2 + 22.434u − 1.0149
where u is the measured thermal Emf.
A representative signal of thermal emf measured in this article has
been provided in Fig. 5. The maximum thermal Emf of the inner en-
velope has been extracted to calculate the temperature rise with Eq. (2).
Then, the grinding temperature is calculated according to the following
equation:
T = Tm + ΔT
where Tm = 20 °C.
The varied trend of grinding temperature versus the wheel speed is
shown in Fig. 6. It is obvious that a higher speed grinding always
produces a much lower grinding temperature than the conventional
speed grinding. For example, at vw of 120 mm/min, the grinding tem-
perature is about 86 °C when vs is 20 m/s and it decreases to 41 °C when
vs is 120 m/s; at vw of 240 mm/min, the grinding temperature is about
106 °C when vs is 20 m/s and it is decreased to 54 °C when vs is 140 m/s.
In addition, grinding temperature increases a little when workpiece
infeed speed rises.
Noted that, the highest grinding temperature is merely between
40–60 °C in the current high speed grinding experiments. That is to say,
little heat is conducted into the workpiece material. This excellent
phenomenon is not only determined by the nucleate boiling of the
coolant [41], as shown in Fig. 7, which improves the cooling efficiency
with the help of agitating bubbles, but also contributed to the excellent
cutting ability and good thermal conductivity property of CBN abrasive
grains [17,42]. When the wheel speed increases from 50 m/s to 80 m/s,
the coolant blew away from the wheel-workpiece contact zone, so
cooling becomes inefficient at 80 m/s and the temperature increases a
Fig. 5. Typical temperature signal curve during grinding.
Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200
Fig. 6. Effect of wheel speeds on grinding temperature.
(2)
Fig. 7. Schematic illustration of nucleate boiling state at the wheel-workpiece contact
zone.
little. However, when the wheel speed is up to 100 m/s, the hydro-
dynamic pressure is very high (about 8 bar) [43]. As such, the boiling
temperature of coolant rises, which is in favor of grinding under the
(3) expected nucleate boiling condition. Therefore, the grinding tempera-
ture drops in high speed grinding. Though the higher grinding speed
has the effect on blowing away the coolant, the influence of high
pressure in the wheel-workpiece seems to be more remarkable.
According to the law of thermodynamics, the thermal transferred
into the workpiece surface Q could be expressed as:
Q = C·m·ΔT = C·ρ·V·ΔT (4)
where C is the specific heat capacity, m is the mass of workpiece ma-
terial where the temperature rises up during the grinding process, ρ is
the workpiece material density and V is the heat-affected material vo-
lume.
The thermal transmitting time t is:
t = ls/vs = (ap·ds)1/2/vs (5)
where ls = (ap·ds)1/2 is the length of wheel-workpiece contact zone.
Thus, the thermal power Pthermal could be defined as:
Pthermal = Q/t = C·ρ·V·ΔT·vs/(ap·ds)1/2 (6)
During grinding, measuring directly the actual depth of the heat-
affected zone in workpiece is rather difficult. Thus, a simulation on
grinding temperature distribution has been carried out using the
moving thermal source. In the current simulation, the heat flux applied
is calculated from the results of mean tangential forces. 20-nodes hex
elements are utilized to mesh the simulated components. The mesh
method was applied to deal with the sharp temperature gradient in the
workpiece top region, while keeping a reasonable element size to re-
duce the calculation time. Therefore, the fine elements were designed in
the workpiece top region, and the coarse ones were in the bottom re-
gion of the ground workpiece. Besides, a triangular heat flux has also
been assumed to the wheel-workpiece contact width. The initial tem-
perature considered for the workpiece is the room temperature (i.e.
20 °C). Many more details of the simulation process can be referred
from Ref. [44].
The simulated temperature distribution within the ground work-
piece is displayed in Fig. 8 at vs of 100, 120 and 140 m/s when vw is
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Fig. 8. Simulated grinding temperature distribution at different wheel speeds: (a) vs = 100 m/s; (b) vs = 120 m/s; (c) vs = 140 m/s.

240 mm/min. The simulated temperature values are generally con-

sistent with the ones measured in the grinding experiments. When the
heat source is moving along the infeed direction, the thermal in the
workpiece has been diffused to the surrounding material and results in
a temperature field tail. The maximum values of simulated temperature
in workpiece at vs of 100, 120 and 140 m/s are 47, 51 and 62 °C, re-
spectively, which matches well with the experimental values of 53, 54
and 56 °C. Besides, the volumes of heat-affected zone in workpiece are
nearly the same in the current simulation. Therefore, according to Eq.
(6), it can be inferred that the heat conducted into workpiece surface
increases in direct proportion to wheel speeds.

3.2. Grinding forces and specific grinding energy Fig. 9. Typical grinding forces signal.

Commonly, the grinding forces contain tangential force, normal

force and feed force. In surface grinding, the feed grinding force is
usually so small that it could be neglected. Fig. 9 illustrates the re-
presentative signal curves of grinding forces measured under the con-
ditions as follows: vs = 100 m/s, vw = 300 mm/min and ap = 0.1 mm.
Fig. 10 shows the specific grinding forces, F't and F'n, which are the
ratio of the grinding forces and grinding width. Obviously, F't and F'n
decrease at each grinding pass when vs is varied from 20 to 140 m/s.
From Eq. (1), it is found that h max is smaller when vs is raised. Owing to
the decrease of h max in the grinding process, each grain removes less
material and bears smaller forces. Additionally, because the wheel-
workpiece contact length ls is kept constant, the total number of active
grains on the wheel surface that contact the workpiece material remains
identical. Accordingly, the final appearance is the diminished grinding
force on the wheel at a higher wheel speed. Moreover, because h max is
inversely proportional to vs, the grinding force tends to decrease rapidly
when vs is increased from 20 to 100 m/s but changes slightly at a higher
wheel speed, e.g. 100–140 m/s.
The specific grinding energy es has a significant influence on
grinding temperature and machined surface integrity. It could be ex-
pressed as [39,45]:
Ft vs
es =
bvw ap (7)
The variation trends of specific grinding energy es versus the wheel
speed vs and undeformed chip thickness h max are displayed in Fig. 11.
Seen from Fig. 10(a), es firstly decreases as vs is increased from 20 to
120 m/s and then rises a little at vs of 140 m/s. Based on the effect of
strain and strain rate hardening in grinding, namely “size effect” [46],
es decreases with the increasing of hmax. According to Fig. 10(b), at vs of
120 m/s, es also turns to be the lowest one in case of the identical value
of hmax. For example, when h max is about 0.3 μm, es is 850, 533, 310,
192 and 280 J/mm3 at vs of 50, 80, 100, 120 and 140 m/s, respectively.
This is due to the various material plasticity under the increasing wheel
speed, which is affected by the comprehensive effects of strain

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C.-W. Dai et al. Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200

Fig. 10. Grinding forces versus wheel

speeds: (a) F't; (b) F'n.

Fig. 11. Specific grinding energy versus

different parameters: (a) vs; (b) hmax.

hardening, strain-rate strengthening and thermal softening. Since the

grinding temperature at high wheel speed is lower than that at con-
ventional wheel speed, the strain and strain-rate strengthening effect is
more remarkable than the thermal softening effect when vs is ranged
from 20 to 120 m/s. Because of the decreased material plasticity, es
turns to be the smallest at 120 m/s, about 190–300 J/mm3. When vs
rises up to 140 m/s, the material plasticity increases. So the specific
grinding energy increases a little.

3.3. Power consumption in high speed grinding

In the present investigation, the grinding power curve is directly

Fig. 12. Typical grinding power signal curve during grinding.
Fig. 13. Effect of wheel speeds on grinding power.
picked up from the spindle power module of the machine tools and then
fed to a dynamic signal recorder. A representative spindle power curve
is provided in Fig. 12, which reflects the whole grinding process. At the
beginning, though the CBN wheel hasn’t cut into the workpiece, it still
takes nearly 0.85 kW of power to make the wheel rotated at the speed
of 50 m/s (as shown in zone A). Then, the wheel-workpiece contact
length gets longer with the feed of ground workpiece. Meanwhile, the
number of active grains increases and the undeformed chip thickness
gets larger, thus resulting in grinding power increasing from 0.85 to
1.8 kW (zone B). Then, the grinding power reaches a relatively stable
stage (various between 1.6 and 1.8 kW) as the wheel cuts into the
workpiece totally (zone C). Subsequently, the number of active cutting
grits participating in grinding decreases and grinding power falls to
0.85 kW while the wheel goes out of workpiece (zone D). Finally, after
the wheel separates from the workpiece and grinding, the power keeps
stable again (zone E).
The varied trend of grinding power versus wheel speed is also ob-
tained, as shown in Fig. 13. The grinding power firstly varies slightly as
wheel speed vs rises up from 20 to 100 m/s since the volume of material
removed per unit second keeps uniform. Then, it rises rapidly with
further increasing of wheel speed to 140 m/s. For example, at vw of

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Fig. 14. Energy partitioning into (a) lost power; (b) ground workpiece.

ε = Pcut/Ptotal (10)

η = 1 − Pcut/Ptotal (11)

Fig. 15. Schematic illustration of film boiling state at the wheel-workpiece contact zone
in grinding.
Usually, the cutting heat flux generated within the grinding zone is
transferred into the workpiece, tool, chips, and coolant, respectively.
Therefore, the temperature rise of the ground surface is generally in-
fluenced comprehensively by the cutting energy produced in grinding
and the energy partitioning into workpiece. Therefore, it is necessary to
consider the energy partition. The total and cutting heat flux, qt and qc,
can be calculated according to the following equation [47]:
ptotal
qt =
bls (12)

Ft vs
qc =
bls (13)
where ls is the wheel-workpiece contact length, as follows:

ls = a p ds (14)
The heat flux entering the workpiece in the cutting process, qwc,
could be further expressed as [47]:

Fig. 16. Surface roughness versus wheel speed.
120 mm/min, the grinding power is about 0.8 kW when vs is ranged
from 20 to 100 m/s and rises up to 1.4 kW at vs of 140 m/s; at vw of
240 mm/min, the grinding power is about 1.1 kW when vs is ranged
from 20 to 100 m/s and it is increased to 1.7 kW at vs of 140m/s.
Moreover, due to the increased volume of material removed per unit
second, the grinding power is increased when the workpiece infeed
speed rises. Additionally, it is also found that the grinding power at vs of
100 m/s is nearly half of that at 140 m/s, which is mainly due to the
enlarged pressure in wheel-workpiece contact zone when the wheel
speed becomes much higher, which makes more energy taken away by
coolants.
Based on the law of energy conservation, the total grinding power
Ptotal could be divided into two parts: the power for cutting material Pcut
and the lost power Plost taken away by the bearing friction, the air
friction and the machine vibration, as shown in Fig. 13. It can be re-
presented by:
Ptotal = Pcut + Plost
Pcut = Ft·vs
Additionally, the energy partition of cutting ε and the lost power η
and can be defined as follows:
k w vw1/2 θmax
qwc =
1.13α1/2ap1/4 ds1/4 (15)
where kw = 14.7 W/(m· °C) is the workpiece thermal conductivity,
α = 11.8 × 10−6 °C−1 is the workpiece thermal diffusivity and
θmax = T is the maximum grinding temperature.
Combining Eqs. (12) to (15), the energy partitioning into the
workpiece Rw is calculated by:
εqwc b ap ds
qw q q
Rw = = wc ⋅ c =
qt qc qt Ft vs (16)
The results of the energy partitioning into the ground workpiece and
lost power are displayed in Fig. 14. Obviously, the partition of grinding
power varies at different wheel speeds. According to Eq. (11), the en-
ergy partition of the lost power η is the least (about 20%–30%) at
conventional wheel speed, i.e. 20 m/s and 50 m/s, while it comes up to
the maximum value (about 55% to 65%) at vs of 140 m/s, as shown in
Fig. 14(a). The lost power at vs of 140 m/s is about twice as that at
conventional wheel speed, which results in the total grinding power at
conventional wheel speed nearly half of that at 140 m/s. That is to say,
more energy has been lost in the bearing friction, the air friction and the
(8)
machine vibration at 140 m/s than the others, perhaps due to the ex-
(9) istence of heavy wind when the wheel speed is high.
By the way, it could be obtained by Eq. (16) that only about
0.3–0.4% of the total grinding power has been converted into the
ground workpiece in high speed grinding, as shown in Fig. 14(b). It’s

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Fig. 17. Microstructure of ground surface: (a) vs = 120 m/s, vw = 120 mm/min, ap = 0.1 mm; (b) vs = 120m/s, vw = 300 mm/min, ap = 0.1 mm; (c) vs = 120m/s, vw = 1200 mm/min,
ap = 0.1 mm.
likely that, in high speed grinding, the induced thermal tends to be
transferred away from the ground surface under the condition of
coolant convection, because the hydrodynamic pressure in the wheel-
workpiece contact zone is very high. That’s why such low temperature
of 50–60 °C is obtained in the workpiece surface in high speed grinding.
However, once the workpiece infeed speed increases too much (such as
1200 mm/min), the heat flux in the wheel-workpiece contact zone gets
much larger. Thus, when the heat flux is bigger than a critical value, the
coolant will enter the film boiling state. As displayed in Fig. 15, it can
be observed that there exists a continuous steam film between the he-
ated coolant and the ground surface. As noted above, when the coolant
changes to the gas phase, its thermal conductivity would decrease
nearly 30 times, which makes it rather difficult for the coolant to take
away the heat [48–51]. At this time, the grinding temperature suddenly
rises to above 850 °C and grinding burn happens [52].
3.4. Ground surface quality
The ground surface roughness Ra and the microstructures of the
workpiece were measured to evaluate the ground surface quality. As
displayed in Fig. 16, the surface roughness Ra decreases and appears to
be the minimum at vs of 120 m/s. Usually, more cracks and breakages
would be generated on the ground surface if the grinding force in-
creases too much. As mentioned in Section 3.2, the grinding forces on
ground workpiece decrease with an increasing wheel speed, so the
surface roughness falls down. Meanwhile, more grains get into the
contact zone but the volume of removed material keeps constant when
the wheel speed rises up. As a result, the groove depth on the ground
surface left by each grain is shallower, acting as better surface rough-
ness. Even though the surface roughness grows up a little at 140 m/s, it
is still under Ra 0.4 μm. Finally, it could be inferred that high speed
grinding would get a great ground surface roughness and improve for
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Precision Engineering 52 (2018) 192–200
one precision level.
The microstructure of the cross section perpendicular to the work-
piece infeed direction is provided in Fig. 17. There is no distorted lattice
or elongated grain in the ground surface/subsurface layer in Fig. 17(a)
and (b), which is due to the small grinding forces and low grinding
temperature, as described in Sections 3.1 and 3.2. For this reason, little
plastic deformation and none degenerating layer took place during
grinding. However, the white layer may be produced on the degen-
erating layer if grinding burn happens under a heavy grinding condi-
tion, as displayed in Fig. 17(c). The white layer formation is a kind of
material phase transformation due to the rapid heating and subsequent
cooling in essence [13]. Under grinding burn condition, the tempera-
ture in workpiece surface layer is more than 850 °C. But the following
high pressure coolant makes the workpiece rapidly cooled. Thus, the
white layer is formed due to the dissolution of γ’ phase and a sharp
interface between white layer and bulk material is produced. Since
grinding is usually used as the final process in aero engine manu-
facturing, such as fir tree blade root, the white layer commonly needs to
be avoided. High speed grinding provides a small grinding force and a
low grinding temperature, which is beneficial for controlling the white
layer.
4. Conclusions
High speed grinding experiments of Inconel 718 have been carried
out at the wheel speed ranging from 20 to 140 m/s. The grinding
temperature and power consumption were discussed. The following
conclusions could be drawn:
(1) The minimum grinding force and specific grinding energy are ob-
tained at wheel speed vs of 120 m/s and the grinding temperature is
less than 100 °C at this moment.
C.-W. Dai et al.
(2) The lost grinding power reaches the maximum value at 140 m/s,
which accounts for about 55%–65% of the total grinding power.
However, the corresponding minimum values, such as about 20%-
30%, are obtained at a conventional wheel speed.
(3) The optimum wheel speeds of 100–120 m/s is determined for
grinding of Inconel 718 nickel-based superalloy under the given
experimental conditions; at this time, the surface roughness Ra
below 0.4 μm is obtained, and the distorted lattice or elongated
grain is not produced in the ground surface/subsurface layer.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this
work by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No.
51375235 and No. 51775275], the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities [No. NE2014103] and the Youth Innovation
Promotion Association CAS [No. 2016387].
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