SELECTION OF APPROPRIATE FLUID DELIVERY TECHNIQUE FOR GRINDING TITANIUM GRADE-1 USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

Grinding is commonly used in industry for the finishing or semi-finishing of different mechanical components. In this process, a wheel is rotated at a high speed. The wheel is made of abrasive particles known as grits. During grinding, high grinding zone temperature is experienced leading to several grinding defects. To control these thermal defects grinding fluid is usually employed mainly to cool and lubricate the grinding region. However, most of the applied grinding fluid cannot reach the grinding zone as it is deflected by the stiff air layer formed around the wheel periphery. Several attempts have been made in the past to overcome this problem in order to guarantee better fluid delivery. In this paper, two newly developed methods, a pneumatic barrier and a compound nozzle are considered to serve this purpose. Grinding experiments are conducted on titanium grade-1 specimens under four environmental conditions, which include dry, flood cooling, flood cooling with pneumatic barrier set up and cooling using a compound nozzle. Under each environment, 10 grinding passes are undertaken using 10, 20 and 30 mm infeed. Data obtained are used to optimize the grinding performance by employing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP results show compound nozzle fluid delivery at 20 mm infeed to be the appropriate condition for grinding titanium grade-1 within this experimental domain. This condition is supposed to deliver grinding fluid deep into the grinding zone thereby controlling grinding temperature effectively and may be recommended to the industry.