Study on machining performance in grinding of Ni-base single crystal superalloy DD5

The Ni-base single crystal superalloy DD5 is commonly employed in critical parts of turbine blades and turbine disks in aeronautical engines. To improve the surface machining quality, single-factor experiments were carried out to investigate the changes of grinding force, surface morphology, and chip morphology under different grinding conditions (dry, conventional flood, minimum quantity lubrication). The experiments showed that the conventional flood lubrication and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) could enormously reduce the surface roughness, grinding force, and work-hardened layer thickness of DD5. At the depth of 5 similar to 15 mu m, the DD5 subsurface microhardness decreased sharply with the increase of depth, and the microhardness under different grinding conditions was in the order of dry grinding, conventional flood, and MQL. However, at the depth of 20 similar to 150 mu m, the DD5 subsurface microhardness tended to equilibrate and fluctuate around 540 HV. In addition, compared with dry grinding, the degree of chip serration was obvious in flood or MQL environment, and its chip formation frequency fluctuated less and chip formation was stable. Within the experimental parameters, the MQL grinding machining method obtained the lowest surface roughness and the highest surface quality with the lowest associated cost, which is the ideal grinding and cooling lubrication method for the Ni-base single crystal superalloy.