High performance composite nozzle for the improvement of cooling in grinding machine tools

Although grinding is one of the most versatile machining operations that can be used to produce surface finish up to the micrometer level; it often induces thermal damage to a ground surface and higher power consumption if careful selection of grinding parameters are not made. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a newly developed composite structure with enhanced coolant delivery system for optimizing grinding processes in comparison to the nozzles commercially available. The current investigation further aims to correlate the effect of tool geometry developed on grinding process conditions through experiment and modeling by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA). The results show that with the use of the newly developed composite nozzle, a 30% decrease in coolant waste was achieved. Besides, it was found that the new nozzle yielded approximately 60-80% percentage pump pressure and power reduction compared to commercially available nozzles. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.