Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880
DOI 10.1007/s00170-015-6850-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Wheel normal grinding of hard and brittle materials
Bing Guo & Qingliang Zhao
Received: 14 October 2014 / Accepted: 27 January 2015 / Published online: 21 February 2015
# Springer-Verlag London 2015
Abstract Microaspherical and freeform optics of hard and
brittle materials have been more and more widely used in
aerospace, optical system, and digital products with the rapid
development of science and technology. The wheel normal
grinding has an important practical significance for the man-
ufacture of these microaspherical and freeform optical sur-
faces because not only the interference between grinding
wheel and microsurface can be overcome but also the tool
geometry errors can be avoided to transfer into the ground
surface. In this paper, the kinematics and surface formation
in wheel normal grinding process were presented firstly. Then,
for hard and brittle materials, the maximum uncut chip thick-
ness and ductile/brittle regime have been addressed by analy-
sis of grinding mode and calculation of ductile/brittle transi-
tion critical depths. Special attention has been given to the
condition for generating a ductile mode response on the
ground surface in wheel normal grinding process. Finally,
the aspherical surfaces of BK7, ZERODUR, and binderless
WC were ground by wheel normal grinding. The surface
roughness Ra was 8.5, 6.6, and 7.4 nm, respectively, and the
form error (PV) of BK7 and binderless WC was less than
0.3 μm, while that of ZERODUR was less than 0.5 μm.
Keywords Wheel normal grinding . Hard and brittle material .
Ductile grinding . Surface morphology
1 Introduction
The demand for microaspherical and freeform optics of hard
and brittle materials is increasing at a high rate. Besides low
B. Guo (*) : Q. Zhao
Center for Precision Engineering, School of Mechatronics
Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
e-mail: guobing@hit.edu.cn
surface roughness and high form accuracy in the nanometer
range, their optical surface requires to have smaller size and
more complex form in order to realize the miniaturization and
simplification of these advance optics.
To achieve high quality of these microaspherical and
freeform surfaces on hard and brittle materials, ultraprecision
grinding gives a promising alternative. With the high wear
resistance and high precise profile of diamond wheels, ultra-
precision grinding can be used efficiently for the direct preci-
sion machining of optical glasses and glass ceramics or the
molds prepared of tungsten carbide and ceramic mould inserts
which are subsequently used in glass hot pressing operation.
In recent years, several grinding techniques for the
manufacturing of microaspherical and freeform surface have
been developed, such as wheel normal grinding [1, 2]. In
wheel normal grinding process, the grinding wheel is kept
normal to the workpiece surface by maintaining perpendicu-
larity between the rotary B-axis and the point of contact. The
included angle between grinding spindle axis and surface tan-
gent is kept constant (usually 45°) over the entire grinding
process [1]. Therefore, the tool geometry errors can be
avoided to transfer into the ground surface, resulting to im-
proved grinding accuracy.
Due to the advantages of wheel normal grinding, many
research results have been reported. Suzuki et al. [3] devel-
oped the wheel normal grinding system for grinding of the
microaspherical surfaces. The grinding wheel axis is 45° in-
clined from the workpiece rotational axis. The wheel was
formed to a precise columnar shape of 0.8 mm in the diameter.
Tohme [4] provided the details of wheel normal grinding pro-
tocol and the grinding experiments of aspherical and toric
surface on tungsten carbide. Yamamoto et al. [5] reported a
developed wheel normal grinding method using three linear
axes. Guo et al. [6, 7] analyzed the machining errors of wheel
normal grinding and implemented the grinding of TiC-based
cermet hemisphere couples and binderless WC aspherics.
874 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880

Chen et al. [8] presented a compensation approach based on
the on-machine measurement for the wheel normal grinding
of aspheric molds in order to improve grinding profile accu-
racy. Then a series of process technology, such as the criteria
for selection of wheel geometry for avoiding the interference,
wheel setting error, and wheel wear compensation, have been
provided [9]. Despite various research efforts in wheel normal
grinding, the grinding mechanism including the surface for-
mation and brittle/ductile transition of hard and brittle mate-
rials in wheel normal grinding is not available in the current
literature.
In this paper, the kinematics and surface formation in wheel
normal grinding process were presented firstly. Then, for the
grinding of hard and brittle materials, the maximum uncut
chip thickness and ductile/brittle regime have been addressed
by analysis of grinding mode and calculation of ductile/brittle
transition critical depths. Special attention has been given to
the condition for generating a ductile mode response on the
ground surface in wheel normal grinding process. Finally, the
aspherical surfaces of BK7, ZERODUR, and binderless WC
were ground by wheel normal grinding, and the ground sur-
face morphology and grinding quality were estimated
respectively.
2 Surface formation of wheel normal grinding
The kinematical illustration of wheel normal grinding process
is shown in Fig. 1. In wheel normal grinding, the grinding
wheel is usually tilted by 45° with respect to the normal direc-
tion of workpiece surface. The grinding point of wheel usually
moves along the cross-sectional profile of the workpiece from
center to side during the machining process in order to avoid
the interference between the workpiece and cylindrical wheel.
Thus, the helical envelope traces on the ground surface are
produced by the edge profile of cylindrical wheel, except the

Fig. 1 Kinematical illustration of

wheel normal grinding a
Illustration of ground surface. b, c
The effect of the wheel edge on
residual height, R ≥ √2F/2Nw. d
Model for the calculation of
maximum uncut chip thickness. e
Model for material removal
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880 875

workpiece center area due to the grinding profile of wheel Therefore, the edge radius of 20 μm was adopted in subse-
original position, as shown in Fig .1a. The helical pitch fi is quent experiments.
determined by the grinding parameters: feed rate F and work-
piece spindle speed Nw, which is given by:
3 Ductile grinding conditions in wheel normal grinding
F
fi ¼ ð1Þ process
Nw
Previous research works suggest the existence of a critical
depth of cut dc. It has been known that brittle removal of hard
The residual height hi of helical ground surface can be and brittle materials can be transferred to ductile removal as
expressed as: the maximum uncut chip thickness is less than the critical

 grain cutting depth dc in grinding process. The critical depth
1 F
hi ¼ ð2Þ of cut to produce a ductile mode surface on hard and brittle
2 Nw material is derived as [10]:


2
Generally, in order to reduce the residual height hi further, a E Kc
d c ¼ 0:15 ð4Þ
microrounding will be implemented on the edge of grinding H H
wheel in truing process, as shown in Fig .1b, c. Therefore, the
modified residual height hi' of helical ground surface can be where E is the elastic modulus, H the hardness, and Kc is the
expressed as: fracture toughness. For instance, the critical depth of cut for
8 BK7 glass is calculated as 473 nm based on the material prop-

  pffiffiffi

>
> 1 F pffiffiffi  2 F erties of E=82 GPa, Kc =2.6 MPam0.5, and H=5.6 GPa [11],
> 0
< hi ¼ − 2−1 R; R <
2 pNffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2 N and the critical depth of cut for glass ceramic ZERODUR is
w
pffiffiffi
 w ð3Þ
> 0
> 4N 2 2
R −F 2
2 F 91 nm based on the material properties of E=91 GPa, Kc =
>
: hi ¼ R−
w
; R≥ 1.2 MPam0.5, and H=6 GPa [12, 13]. Besides, the critical
2N w 2 Nw
depth of cut for binderless WC is 156 nm [14].
For conventional surface grinding, the maximum uncut
chip thickness hmax, which depends on the cutting tool geom-
where R is the edge radius of grinding wheel. etry, the depth of cut, cutting velocity, and work speed, can be
According to Eq. (3), the modified residual height hi' ver- calculated by the expression [15]:
sus R, F, and Nw are shown in Fig. 2. It can be found that hi' is rffiffiffiffiffi1=2


reduced with a decrease in wheel feed rate F or an increase in 4V w ae
hmax ¼ ð5Þ
workpiece spindle speed Nw or an increase in edge radius of V s Cr D
wheel R. For example, hi' may be decreased to 7.7 nm and less
as F of 0.2 mm/min, Nw of 180 rpm, and R of 20 μm. It should where Vs is the linear speed of the grinding wheel, Vw is the
be noted, although a bigger R can bring smaller residual height workpiece linear speed, D is the wheel diameter, ae is the
to ground surface, it will also lead to worse form accuracy depth of cut, r is the ratio of mean chip width to chip thickness,
because the bigger edge radius has more tool geometry errors. and C is the active grit concentration.

Fig. 2 The modified residual

height hi' versus grinding
parameters: a hi' vs R, F; b hi' vs
R, Nw
876 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880

Fig. 3 The maximum uncut chip thickness hmax' versus workpiece size and grinding parameters: a hmax' vs xi; b hmax' vs F, Nw; c hmax' vs D, Ns

In wheel normal grinding process, the workpiece material According to Eq. (7), the effects of workpiece size xi and
is machined along the helical grinding track in Fig. 1e. There- grinding parameters F, D, Nw, and Ns on the maximum uncut
fore, Eq. (5) cannot be applied to wheel normal grinding di- chip thickness hmax' can be estimated, as shown in Fig. 3. The
rectly. According to Fig. 1d, the workpiece linear speed Vw' maximum uncut chip thickness increases with the increase in
along the workpiece rotation direction and the depth of cut ae' distance to the center of the workpiece. This means that the side
for wheel normal grinding can be expressed as: of workpiece will generate cracks firstly if the ductile grinding
8 pffiffiffi
 conditions cannot be satisfied. As show in Fig. 3b, c, on de-
>
> 2 F creasing the workpiece rotate speed Nw, feed rate F, and diam-
< ae 0 ¼
2 Nw ð6Þ eter of wheel D or increasing the wheel rotate speed Ns, the
>
> 2πxi N w maximum uncut chip thickness hmax' decreases. It indicates
: V w0 ¼
60 the ductile grinding can be realized by increasing wheel rotate
speed or decreasing workpiece rotate speed, feed rate, and di-
where xi is the radius of the grinding point form workpiece
ameter of wheel to ensure hmax' less than the critical depth of cut
rotation center.
dc in wheel normal grinding process of hard and brittle mate-
By substituting the workpiece linear speed and the depth of
rials. Besides, it should be noted that the hmax' does not depend
cut into Eq. (5), the maximum uncut chip thickness hmax' for
on the depth of grinding a, which is different with the traditional
wheel normal grinding process can be obtained as:
grinding process.
0 pffiffiffi 11=2
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
8N w xi 2F A
hmax 0 ¼@ ð7Þ
N s DCr 2N w D 4 Experimental setup

where Ns is the grinding wheel spindle speed. Within this work, the wheel normal grinding process of the
aspheric surface was developed. The workpiece materials
were optical glass BK7, glass ceramic ZERODUR, and
binderless WC. The experiments were carried out using a 4-

Table 1 The details of grinding conditions

Cylindrical wheel of 8 mm diameter 2000# diamond resin bond

Workpiece BK7, ZERODUR, and Binderless

WC
Feed rate F 0.3–1.5 mm/min
Depth of grinding a 1–4 μm
Workpiece rotate speed Nw 50–300 rpm
Grinding wheel rotate speed Ns 30,000–60,000 rpm
Coolant Water solution
Fig. 4 Grinding experimental setup
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880 877

Fig. 5 The brittle to ductile transition in wheel normal grinding process (BK7)

Fig. 6 The effects of grinding parameters on ground surface morphology (Zerodur)

878
Fig. 7 The effect of error compensation on form accuracy
axis (X, Y, Z, and B) precision grinding machine. A resin bond
cylindrical diamond wheel of mesh size of 2000 (average
grain size 6 μm) with diameter of 8 mm was used to perform
wheel normal grinding experiments. The abrasive concentra-
tion of this diamond wheel is 25 %. The grinding experimental
setup is shown in Fig. 4. The details of grinding condition are
listed in Table 1. Before grinding, the diamond wheel was
trued by Al2O3 truer and aligned with the center of the work-
piece spindle in order to eliminate the machining errors [6].
The surface roughness and form accuracy of ground sur-
face were measured by probe profilometer (Form Talysurf
PGI 1240). The morphology of ground surface was observed
by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical micro-
scope to estimate the ductile/brittle grinding. Moreover, an
on-machine measurement system with sapphire microprobe
was used to implement the error compensation grinding in
order to meet the requirement of form accuracy of aspheric
surface.
5 Results and discussion
The general features of the ground surfaces for wheel normal
grinding are illustrated in Fig. 5, which was obtained on BK7
by 2 μm depth of grinding, 1.5 mm/min feed rate, 200 rpm
workpiece rotate speed, and 45,000 rpm wheel rotate speed.
Table 2 The grinding parameters
of BK7, ZERODUR, and
binderless WC
Feed rate F (mm/min)
Depth of grinding a (μm)
Workpiece rotate speed Nw (rpm)
Grinding wheel rotate speed Ns (rpm)
Compensation cycle
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880
Conformity with the surface formation analysis in Section 2,
the ground surface was dominated by helical envelope traces. It
should be noted that the central zones of workpiece displayed
pure ductile behavior, as shown in the left of Fig. 5. However,
with the increase in distance to the center of the workpiece,
more and more brittle cracks appeared on the ground surface,
which is due to the increase of maximum uncut chip thickness.
The effects of grinding parameters, such as depth of grind-
ing, feed rate, workpiece rotate speed, and wheel rotate speed,
on ground surface morphology and ductile/brittle removal be-
havior are shown in Fig. 6. With increasing depth of grinding,
the variation of ground surface morphology and brittle cracks
was not remarkable, which is in conformity with the analysis
of Eq. (7). However, the measure results of surface roughness
indicated that the roughness Ra has increased from 17 to
22 nm on increasing a. This is because an increase in the depth
of grinding a yielded an increase in grinding force, leading to
stronger grinding vibration which would damage the ground
surface.
According to Eq. (1) and Eq. (7), both of the helical pitch fi
of ground surface and ductile/brittle removal behavior are de-
termined by feed rate F and workpiece spindle speed Nw,
which was proved by Fig. 6b, c. With the decrease of feed rate
F, not only the pitch fi was decreased but also the cracks were
reduced due to the decrease of maximum uncut chip thickness.
While with the decrease of workpiece rotate speed Nw, al-
though the cracks were reduced similarly, the pitch fi was
increased, which would augment the residual height hi'.
Therefore, the combination of smaller feed rate F and relative-
ly higher workpiece spindle speed Nw was suggested to im-
prove surface finish.
Theoretically, the higher wheel rotate speed means smaller
maximum uncut chip thickness and feeds per revolution,
which would result in a better surface quality. However, the
influence of dynamic characteristics of grinding spindle on the
surface quality in grinding is substantial [16]. The higher spin-
dle speed might cause an increase in the vibration level of the
grinding spindle, which would have contributed to the in-
crease of surface roughness. As shown in Fig. 6d, although
the pure ductile ground surface was generated in the range of
30,000 to 60,000 rpm wheel rotate speed, the best surface
roughness (Ra =6.6 nm) was achieved at 45,000 rpm wheel
rotate speed.
Optical glass BK7 Glass ceramic ZERODUR Binderless WC
0.5 0.3 0.3
1 1 1
150 150 150
45,000 45,000 45,000
3 times 2 times 3 times
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880
Fig. 8 The surface roughness of
ground aspheric surface: a BK7, b
ZERODUR, c Binderless WC
According to the above, the depth of grinding, wheel rotate
speed, and workpiece rotate speed were fixed in 1 μm, 45,
000 rpm, and 150 rpm in subsequent experiments. While the
feed rate was optimized to ensure both of the improvement of
ground surface finish and the realization of ductile grinding
for different workpiece materials. For the workpiece of
ZERODUR and WC, the feed rate of 0.3 mm/min was select-
ed in order to ensure the maximum uncut chip thickness was
in the range of the calculated critical depth of cut. While in this
grinding process of BK7, the feed rate of 0.5 mm/min was
adopted for improving the surface finish.
Fig. 9 The photographs of
ground workpiece: a BK7, b
ZERODUR, c binderless WC
879
To achieve higher form accuracy in wheel normal grinding
process, the error compensation grinding will be implemented
in our experiments as follows. After the initial grinding, the
ground surface was measured using on-machine measurement
system. If the required form accuracy was not obtained, the
grinding wheel would be measured and the wheel wear would
be evaluated firstly. On condition that the profile of grinding
wheel edge was worn out, the re-truing process would be
implemented on-machine, and then the compensation pro-
gram was generated considering both of the form deviation
of ground surface and the profile variant of trued grinding
880
wheel. Then, further grinding with the compensation program
was implemented. It should be noted that the grinding wheel
would not be trued again in the subsequent compensation
cycle. Figure 7 shows the influence of error compensation
on form errors of ground aspherical surface in PV value. After
the compensations cycle, all of the form accuracy of BK7,
ZERODUR, and binderless WC workpiece were improved
observably. The final form error (PV) of aspherical surfaces
on BK7 and binderless WC was less than 0.3 μm, while that
of ZERODUR was less than 0.5 μm.
According to the grinding experimental results, the most
promising quality of aspherical surface was obtained when
grinding parameters were conducted, as shown in Table 2.
As shown in Fig. 8, the surface roughness Ra of BK7,
ZERODUR, and binderless WC were 8.5, 6.6, and 7.4 nm,
respectively. The photographs of ground workpiece in this
case are shown in Fig. 9.
6 Conclusions
1. The kinematics and surface formation in wheel normal
grinding process were presented. The residual height of
ground surface with helical envelope traces is reduced
with the decrease of feed rate, the increase of workpiece
rotate speed, or the increase of wheel edge radius,
theoretically.
2. The ductile grinding conditions of wheel normal process
were addressed by calculation of ductile/brittle transition
critical depths and analysis of the maximum uncut chip
thickness. The ductile grinding can be realized by increas-
ing wheel rotate speed or decreasing workpiece rotate
speed, feed rate, and diameter of wheel. However, the
ductile grinding does not depend on the depth of grinding.
3. The aspherical surfaces of BK7, ZERODUR, and
binderless WC were ground by wheel normal grinding.
The surface roughness Ra was 8.5, 6.6, and 7.4 nm re-
spectively, and the form error (PV) of BK7 and binderless
WC was less than 0.3 μm, while that of ZERODUR was
less than 0.5 μm.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Natural
Scientific Foundation of China [Grant No. 51405108] and the Fundamen-
tal Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant No. HIT. NSRIF.
2015056].
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 79:873–880
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