Wear behavior of grain cutting edges and wheel surface topography in grinding with vitrified diamond wheels

This study was performed to clarify the influence of wheel wear on the wheel surface topography in the grinding process with a vitrified diamond wheel. To investigate the relation between wheel surface topography and grain wear behavior, cylindrical plunge grinding experiments of alumina ceramics were conducted using vitrified diamond wheel with the 200 concentration, and the changing wheel surface during the grinding process was observed using a replica-SEM method. The wear process of the grain cutting edge can be classified into three types based on the changes in attritious wear flat area of the grain cutting edge with grinding: (a) attrition wear type, (b) attrition wear-fracture wear type, and (c) self-sharpening type. Even if the self-sharpening by micro-fracture occurs, attritious wear flat is always left on the apical surface of the grain cutting edge. Therefore, the self-sharpening phenomenon by micro-fracture hardly causes any unevenness in the height of the cutting edge on the wheel working surface.