Effects of wheel speed on surface/subsurface damage characteristics in grinding of glass-ceramics

Glass-ceramic is widely used in optics and other areas because of its good physical and mechanical properties. However, the accompanying hard and difficult to machine characteristic brings great challenges to the commonly used grinding in industry. Previous researches on the removal mechanism of glass-ceramic are basically traditional low-speed scratch and low-speed grinding, ignoring the effect of the wheel speed on surface/subsurface damage. In this study, the effects of the wheel speed on the surface morphology, surface roughness, and subsurface damage of Zerodur glass-ceramics were studied at different wheel speeds based on a multi-step grinding process. Experimental and analytical results showed that increasing wheel speed can restrain the occurrence and development of brittle fractures due to the effects of strain rate and grinding temperature, resulting in fewer and smaller micro-pits and micro-cracks, and thus more signs of plastic flow are observed. In addition, the effects of wheel speed on surface roughness under the semi-finishing grinding stage are not as clearly defined as on that under the rough and finishing grinding stages. The smeared layers on the ground surface, which are related to the compound effects of the grinding temperature and semi-finishing grinding conditions, are recognized as the major contributor to the contradictory surface roughness results. Furthermore, the effect of wheel speed can prevent crack from nucleating and propagating, and then leads to a smaller depth of subsurface damage. Accordingly, there is a general trend toward subsurface damage depth with the increase of undeformed chip thickness, regardless of the grinding conditions. In a word, higher wheel speeds are easier to achieve ductile removal mode and conversely, the glass-ceramic is more prone to a brittle removal mode. The research is expected to provide guidance for grinding-induced damage control and the engineering application in high precision optical parts of glass-ceramic.