Development of an innovative grinding process for producing functional surfaces

In the present work, a novel approach is proposed to produce a functional surface with hydrophobic property by grinding process with rearranging the position of abrasive particles on the wheel. To this end, diamond particles were attached in predefined positions by a drilled thin polyethylene mask during the electroplating process. The SEM images showed that the developed wheel led to the production of structured surface with regular and equal sized scratches in a continuous and discontinuous manner. Based on the contact angle tests, the hydrophobicity of the surface was enhanced by 380% (140) compared to the as-received (unstructured) specimen (37). Simultaneously, the kinematics of the grinding process was analytically studied and an equation was derived according to the Cassie-Baxter wettability theory and the grinding kinematics. The closeness of the experimental and analytical results confirmed the high accuracy of the generated equation for the novel method of this study. However, the error sources have been exhaustively evaluated in terms of positive and negative influences on the experimental results, which can be attributed to three main factors, including the assumptions of the analytical model, elastic deformation in ductile material removal mechanism (spring back phenomenon), and pile-up in scratch formation. The present study has produced hydrophobic surface by grinding process (with structured wheel) that has a surface polishing logic, which is expected to replace with the similar techniques in order to reduce costs and production rate.