Investigation of a heat pipe cooling system in high-efficiency grinding

The high grinding temperature is one of the problems restricting on the further development of high-efficiency grinding due to the workpiece burnout and excessive wheel wear. An original method about enhancing heat transfer in the contact zone based on heat pipe technology is put forward to reduce the grinding temperature in this paper. Drawing on the structure of rotation heat pipe, one heat pipe cooling system, heat pipe grinding wheel (HPGW) applied to high-efficiency grinding, is developed and its heat transfer principle is illustrated. Besides, the cooling effect in the contact zone using HPGW is simulated through a three-dimensional heat transfer model in grinding, and the influence of different parameters of the wheel speed, cooling condition, and heat flux input on the grinding temperature is analyzed. Eventually, preliminary grinding experiments with HPGW were carried out to verify the cooling effect by comparing with non-HPGW in grinding of 0.45 wt.% C steel and titanium alloy Ti-6A1-6V. Results show that using HPGW can significantly reduce the grinding temperature and prevent the burnout.