Grinding of steel-ceramic-composites

Steel-ceramic composites offer a high potential as protective layers of mechanically and abrasively highly loaded parts. However, the machining f steel-ceramic composites is a great challenge for the process design due to the very different mechanical properties of the brittle ceramic paticles embedded in the ductile steel matrix. Both materials must be machined simultaneousely in ducitle mode to gain high surface qualities. This paper introduces a new process characteristic that describes the influence of the peripheral grinding process settings and tool specifications on the process forces and workpiece surface roughness when grinding steel-ceramic composites. An empirical model is derived to estimate the surface roughness depending on the process settings and tool specifications. It is also shown that the results gained in peripheral grinding can be transferred to face grinding. Adequate process parameters can be therefore estimated in both grinding processes to gain high surface qualities.