Enhancement of grinding performances using fabricated pore aligned grinding wheels with PCA-GRA

Grinding is the most common method of abrasive finishing. Still, the primary issue faced is heat generation due to high-speed material removal, which leads to thermal damage on the work surfaces and inferior surface finish. Therefore, coolant is supplied at the grinding zone to overcome the temperature rise. In the present work, pore aligned grinding wheel is designed for an adequate supply of coolants. The grinding performance was evaluated in EN 18 Steel workpiece through experiments formulated as per the L18 orthogonal array. Grey relational analysis combined with principal component analysis was utilized to minimize surface roughness (SR) and specific energy (SE) and to improve the material removal rate (MRR), grinding ratio (GR), and grinding efficiency (GE). The input parameters considered are different grades (J, K, L) of the wheel, grams per square meter (GSM) of the disc (190, 230, 260), and positions of disc insertion. For the said objective, optimal setting parameters were found at 230 GSM disc, wheel grade of "K," and disc position at the inner portion of the wheel. The position of a disc is the vital parameter that influences the objective function by 67.3%, disc insertion by 12.6%, and wheel grade by 10.2%.