Study on Dry Electrical Discharge Assisted Grinding of SiCp/Al Composite

Abstract SiC-reinforced aluminum matrix (SiCp/Al) composite is widely utilized in the aerospace, automotive, and electronics industries due to the combination of ceramic hardness and metal toughness. However, the significant disparity in properties between SiC particles and the aluminum matrix results in severe tool wear and diminished surface quality during conventional machining. This study proposes an environmentally friendly and clean dry electrical discharge assisted grinding process as an efficient and low-damage machining method for SiCp/Al. An experimental platform was set up to study the impact of grinding and discharge process parameters on surface quality. The study compared the chip formation mechanism and surface quality between dry electrical discharge assisted grinding and conventional grinding, revealing relationships between surface roughness, grinding force, grinding temperature, and related parameters. The results indicate that the proposed grinding method leads to smaller chip sizes, lower grinding forces and temperatures, and an average reduction of 19.2% in surface roughness compared to conventional grinding. The axial, tangential, and normal grinding forces were reduced by roughly 10.5%, 37.8%, and 23.0%, respectively. The optimized process parameters were determined to be N = 2500 r/min, v f = 30 mm/min, a = 10 µm, E = 15 V, f = 5000 Hz, d c = 80%, resulting in a surface roughness of 0.161 μm.