Thermal Analysis Of Grinding Process Of Nickel-based Super Alloy INCONEL 718

Development of automated machining robots is blooming,many wellknown process are already automated in order to improve the quality of the product and the production rate.Grinding process is not yet automated,this study falls within this context to develop a better understanding of the process in order to develop an automated grinding robot.Grinding is used as a finishing process to generate the final shape of the desired product.It is a high dimensional and roughness quality process but its high specific energy is likely to generate high temperatures compared to other machining processes.This high temperature at the contact between the grinding wheel and the workpiece is the source of thermal deformation and phase transformations that lead to thermal damage.Thermal damage is from various sources such as residual stresses or oxidation.This thesis focuses on the thermal behaviour of and INCONEL 718 workpiece during the grinding process.Different models have been developed previously to characterize the heat generation and dispersion at the interface grinding wheel – workpiece.The Rowe model is used here to calculate the heat escaping from the workpiece,by convection,and convection with the grinding wheel in order to get the part of heat remaining in the workpiece.Once the heat source intensity is calculated,Jaeger’s model for moving heat sources is used to calculate the evolution of the temperature while grinding a bar in its length and the evolution of the temperature with respect to the depth at steady-state.A numerical model is created using ABAQUS to take into account non-linearity such as the temperature dependence of the parameters and complex boundary conditions.An experiment is carried out on an INCONEL 718 bar to compare the results with the analytical and numerical results.The shape of the curves is similar but the temperature level is different due to some inaccuracies in the parameters to calculate the heat intensity.