Evaluation of grinding wheel loading phenomena by using acoustic emission signals

In the industrial manufacturing field, machining is a major process. Machining operations involve grinding, drilling, milling, turning, pressing, molding, and so on. Among these operations, grinding is the most precise and complicated process. The surface condition of the grinding wheel plays an important role in grinding performance, and the identification of grinding wheel loading phenomena during the grinding process is critical. Accordingly, this present study describes a measurement method based on the acoustic emission (AE) technique to characterize the loading phenomena of a Si₂O₃ grinding wheel for the grinding mass production process. The proposed measurement method combines the process-integrated measurement of AE signals, offline digital image processing, and surface roughness measurement of the ground workpieces for the evaluation of grinding wheel loading phenomena. The experimental results show that the proposed measurement method provides a quantitative index from the AE signals to evaluate the grinding wheel loading phenomena online for the grinding mass production process, and this quantitative index is determined via some experiments in advance in the same grinding environment to help the monitoring and controlling of the grinding process.