Material Removal Behavior and Surface Integrity in Grinding of Ultrafine-Grained WC-Co Materials

Due to the excellent combination of wear resistance and fracture toughness,the ultrafine-grained WC-Co composites can significantly improve the durability and reliability of industrial tools.However,the grinding of ultrafine-grained WC-Co remains a challenge.In order to provide an experimental basis for improving grinding quality of ultrafine-grained WC-Co,a series of surface grinding experiments on ultrafine-grained WC-Co hardmetals were conducted by diamond wheel under various grinding conditions,and the material removal behavior and surface integrity in grinding of ultrafine-grained WC-Co materials were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy(SEM),X-ray microstress analyzer and surface roughness analyzer in this paper.The results indicate that the material removal behavior in grinding of ultrafine-grained WC-Co materials is determined not only by the abrasive grain size on the wheel,but also by the depth of cut.The roughness values of ground surface increase with increasing grit size of diamond wheel,and increase initially,then decrease with increase in depth of cut.Grinding causes the residual compressive stress in the surface layer of ground cemented carbides under various grinding conditions;the magnitude of residual surface stress increases with increasing grit size of diamond wheel,and isn’t changed obviously along with the change of depth of cut.