Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 66:937–945
DOI 10.1007/s00170-012-4378-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Modeling and simulation of grinding surface topography
considering wheel vibration
Yanlong Cao & Jiayan Guan & Bo Li & Xiaolong Chen &
Jiangxin Yang & Chunbiao Gan
Received: 26 December 2011 / Accepted: 4 July 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2012
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2012
Abstract Grinding is an important means of realizing pre-
cision and ultra-precision machining. Vibration caused by
an unbalanced grinding wheel in grinding process has a
significant impact on the quality of workpiece surface.
However, the effect of wheel surface topography and/or
the relative vibration between grinding wheel and work-
piece are not considered in most researches. Taking the
relative vibration between grinding wheel and workpiece
into account, alongside the abrasive grain trajectory equa-
tion, a new analysis and simulation model for surface to-
pography of the grinding process is established. The model
for the topography of the grinding wheel surface is first
studied, and subsequently, a new simulation model for sur-
face topography of the grinding process is proposed. Case
studies are performed at the end, and the influence of grind-
ing wheel vibration amplitude, wheel grit number, as well as
grinding parameters on the surface waviness and roughness
is discussed. The simulation results could be used to opti-
mize the actual grinding process to improve the ground
surface quality or predict the surface topography by given
grinding parameters.
Keywords Grinding . Wheel vibration . Surface topography .
Surface waviness
1 Introduction
It is well known that generation of ground surface is the
response of the workpiece material to the kinematical
Y. Cao (*) : J. Guan : B. Li : X. Chen : J. Yang : C. Gan
Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering,
Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou 310027, China
e-mail: sdcaoyl@zju.edu.cn
mapping of wheel protrusion topography on to the work-
piece surface [1, 5, 9]. The surface topography of work-
piece directly affects its mechanical properties such as
friction, wear, contact stiffness, fitting property, etc.
Grinding, however, is a dynamic and complicated pro-
cess. The workpiece surface is affected by many factors,
including wheel protrusion topography, grinding parame-
ters, and the dynamic characteristics of grinder, especially
its vibration characteristics [2].
Grinding is a process of removing the materials by grains
which are randomly distributed in the wheel surface with
different sizes, shapes, orientations and distribution density.
Since wheel working surface has a direct impact on the
quality of the ground surface, it is significant to establish a
proper model for the surface topography of the grinding
wheel. Stylus instrument, which is a contact measurement
instrument, provides the simplest method of obtaining the
data of the wheel protrusion topography. Xie et al. [3]
proposed a new graphical evaluation of micro-scale wheel
protrusion topography by using 3D coordinate data derived
from contact measurement. Unfortunately, measuring the
whole wheel working surface is a time-consuming activity,
while a realistic simulation of the grinding process requires
a great number of wheel surfaces. Thus, most research has
centered on obtaining the wheel topography by simulation.
One popular approach adopted by many researchers is
meshing the grinding wheel surface with simple shape abra-
sive grains [4–8]. The protrusion height and the position of a
grain in the wheel working surface are stochastic in the
hypothetical grinding model; additionally, the abrasive
grains are assumed to be spherical [4, 5], conical [6] in
shape in order to model the random distribution of abrasive
grains in the wheel surface. Zhou and Xi [7] modeled the
grain protrusion height as a Gaussian random variable,
while Nguyen and Butler [8] modeled a non-Gaussian wheel
surface by two transformations. Alternatively, Wang and
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Moon [9] found that the grinding wheel surface could be
reconstructed by some characteristic wavelength. Salisbury
et al. [10] modeled the 3D wheel surface structure by the 2D
Fourier forward and inverse transforms and analyzed the
effect of specific frequency components in the wheel surface
on the ground surface.
The ground surface is generated by the dynamic interac-
tions between grinding wheel and workpiece in the course
of grinding. Considering the kinematic interactions between
the topography of the grains in the wheel surface and the
workpiece, Malkin [11] carried out mathematical analyses
of the cutting geometry during grinding. He also provided a
basis for analyzing the mechanisms of abrasive interactions
with the workpiece. Zhou and Xi [7] proposed a grain
trajectory equation based on the kinematics relationship
between adjacent grains. However, the model mainly fo-
cused on the grinding mechanism, neglecting the dynamic
characteristics of the grinder. Zhang et al. [12] developed a
non-linear dynamic model to investigate the dynamic char-
acteristics of the grinding process; they also analyzed the
influence of relative vibration of grinding wheel and work-
piece on the depth of cut. Yang and Guo [13] analyzed the
influence of the wheel micro-vibration on the quality of
workpiece surface generated in ultra-precision grinding pro-
cess and established a mathematical model describing the
error of workpiece surface profile caused by vibration.
However, the grinding wheel working surface in their work
was assumed to be smooth. Cheung and his coauthor [14]
presented a model-based simulation system for the analysis
of surface roughness generation in ultra-precision diamond
turning which took into account the effect of tool geometry,
process parameters, and relative tool-work vibration. Using
spectrum analysis techniques, the system can be used to
analyze the effect of vibration on the surface quality of
workpiece and to diagnose the machine faults. The dynamic
model for the grinding process with a micro-positioning
workpiece table was built by utilizing modal analysis theory
and Lagrange's equation [15]. The workpiece machined
surface before and after compensation was simulated in
order to verify the compensation of micro-positioning work-
piece table for forced vibration caused by the centrifugal
force of grinding wheel.
The generation of ground surface in grinding process has
been studied by many researchers. The effect of wheel surface
topography [7] and the relative vibration between grinding
wheel and workpiece [13, 16] on the ground surface has been
studied separately. However, the topography of workpiece
surface is the synthesis of much more factors. The workpiece
surface quality consists of roughness, waviness, and form
error. The ground surface roughness is influenced mainly by
the grains on the wheel working surface, grinding parameters,
cooling/lubrication conditions, etc. The ground surface wavi-
ness is affected primarily by the relative vibration between
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2013) 66:937–945
grinding wheel and workpiece. In order to simulate realisti-
cally the topography of workpiece surface after grinding, it
needs to combine the vibration of the processing system and
wheel surface topography.
Taking the relative vibration between grinding wheel
and workpiece into account, combined with the abrasive
grain trajectory equation, a new simulation model for
surface topography of grinding process is proposed. The
simulation models are generated firstly, and then the
influence of grinding wheel vibration amplitudes and
grinding parameters on the surface waviness is studied
in detail. The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
In Section 2, the model of grinding wheel surface is
studied. A new simulation model for workpiece surface
topography of grinding process is proposed in Section 3.
In Section 4, case studies are performed and the influ-
ences of grinding wheel vibration amplitude, wheel grit
number, and grinding parameters on the surface wavi-
ness and roughness are discussed in detail.
2 Topography model of grinding wheel surface
In grinding, the geometry of the wheel working surface has
a direct relationship with the ground surface. For most
machining processes, the cutting-tool geometry and its in-
teraction with the workpiece are well defined; unfortunately,
the situation for grinding is not readily discernible. A wheel
has a mass of geometrically undefined cutting points which
are irregularly distributed on its working surface and which
are presented to the workpiece at random orientations and
positions [11]. It is significant to establish a proper model
for wheel surface in order to analyze the quality of the
machined surface.
Researches [9, 10, 17] showed that the wheel surfaces are
generally regarded to be isotropic after working a period of
time, and can be characterized as a stochastic isotropic surface.
Abrasive grain size of a specific wheel, also known as grit
number, is related to the mesh number of the screen used to sort
the grains. The grain dimension dg is often quoted in a simple
way as equal to the aperture opening of the control sieve, or
alternatively according to the following relationship [11]
dg ¼ 15:2M 1 ð1Þ
where M is the grit number.
Grain protrusion height h is approximately in the Gauss-
ian distribution with mean value dg and standard deviation
σ. For a given grain, the grain protrusion height can be
determined by
h ¼ σ  h0 þ dg ð2Þ
where h′ is a random sequence satisfying the normal
distribution.