Grinding Force

The measured grinding force was normalised with respect to the workpiece width. For each up-
grinding pass, the representative force value was obtained evaluating the average value of the
correspondent trace. In Figure 1, the trends of normal and tangential components of grinding force as a
function of specific material removal, evaluated as above mentioned, are reported.
As can be seen, the tangential component of grinding force shows only a slight increase with specific
material removal. On the contrary, the normal component exhibits a significant growth. Therefore, it
may be assessed that the progressive wheel clogging does not influence significantly the tangential
component of the grinding force. As far as the normal component is concerned, the grinding wheel
seems to be very sensitive to clogging. Figure 2 shows the weighted average values of normal and
tangential components of specific grinding force for different workpiece materials.
The normal and tangential components of the grinding force are affected by orientation, shape and
volume fraction of the reinforcement and by the type of matrix. For powders composites having the
same matrix, namely Al-2009/SiC-15P, Al-2009/SiC-20P, Al- 2009/SiC-25P, both the components of
the grinding force are inversely related to the material hardness.

Figure 1. Specific grinding force components as a function of specific material removal.

On the contrary, materials reinforced with whiskers, namely Al-2009/SiC-15W and Al-2009/SiC-20W,
show an opposite tendency. This different behaviour is also found if it is considered the reinforcement
orientation. In fact, while for powders composite Al-2009/SiC- 20P, the lowest force values were
obtained perpendicularly to the extrusion direction, for whiskers composite Al-2009/SiC-15W, the
lowest force values were reached parallel to the extrusion direction. However, the reinforcement, both
powders or whiskers, contributes to reduce the tangential component of force. In fact, as can be seen in
Figure 2b, the highest value of the tangential force was obtained for non-reinforced aluminium alloy.

Figure 2. Weighted average values of normal (a) and tangential (b) components of specific grinding
force as a function of workpiece materials.