Grinding force during profile grinding of powder metallurgy superalloy FGH96 turbine disc slots structure using CBN abrasive wheel

Grinding force has an important impact on the ground precision and quality of a workpiece. At present, the effects of the workpiece structure and the change in the abrasive wheel diameter on grinding force are ignored during profile grinding. Therefore, to reduce the grinding force and improve the grinding integrity, profile grinding experiments were conducted on the structure of FGH96 turbine disc slots (TDS) using an electroplated cubic boron nitride (CBN) abrasive wheel. The built grinding force model was evaluated. The influences of the grinding parameters on the grinding force were determined through absolute sensitivity analysis. In addition, the grinding force affected by the slot structure was also studied. Results show that the average errors of the radial and tangential profile grinding forces were 12.8% and 13.4%, and the standard deviation of errors were 5.4% and 5.9%, respectively. The absolute sensitivity of the profile grinding force to the workpiece infeed speed and the depth of cut was positive and that to the abrasive wheel speed and diameter was negative. Furthermore, the grinding forces varied at different positions of slots ground surface. According to the standard deviation, the larger grinding parameters is, the larger dispersion degree of the grinding force will be. The results could provide significant guidance for parameter selection or optimization.