Tool wear introduced during grinding nickel-based superalloys was identified as a significant factor affecting the production quality of aero-engine industries concerning high service performance and high precision. Moreover, uncertainties derived from the various cooling-lubrication modes used in grinding operations complicated the assessment of grinding preformation. Therefore, this work investigated the tool wear mechanisms in grinding nickel-based superalloys that adopted five cooling-lubrication modes and investigated how the wear behaviors affected grinding performance. Results showed that chip-deposits covered some areas on the tool surface under dry grinding and accelerated the tool failure, which produced the highest values of tangential force, 7.46 N, and normal force, 14.1 N. Wedge-shape fractures induced by indentation fatigue were found to be the predominant wear mechanism when grinding nickel-based superalloys under flood cooling mode. The application of minimum quantity lubrication-palm oil (MQL-PO), MQL-multilayer graphene (MQL-MG), and MQL-Al2O3 nanoparticles (MQL-Al2O3) formed lubricity oil-film on the tool surface, which improved the capacity of lubrication in the tool-workpiece contact zone and provided 37%, 30%, and 52% higher coefficient of friction than dry mode, respectively. The results of this study demonstrate that lubricated oil-film produced by MQL modes reduces the possibility of fractures of cubic boron nitride (CBN) grits to some extent.
Keywords: cooling-lubrication; grinding; grinding performance; nickel-based superalloys; tool wear.