Mechanism and experimental evaluation on surface morphology of GCr15SiMn with ultrasonic vibration grinding

GCr15SiMn is a kind of bearing steel material with good physical and mechanical properties, which is broadly used in aerospace, automotive, and other advanced manufacturing fields. However, the harsh environment of the ordinary grinding (OG) process, including high grinding forces, high grinding temperatures, fast grinding wheel wear, and severe chip sticking, has led to the GCr15SiMn material being unable to be widely adopted. This paper introduces ultrasonic vibration grinding (UVG) technology to improve its machined surface quality. First, the formation mechanism of the two grinding methods was analyzed theoretically, and surface morphology of ultrasonic vibration grinding and ordinary grinding processing was analyzed by numerical simulation, while the effects of different processing variables on surface roughness were investigated experimentally. The results show that the simulated morphology is consistent with the experimental morphology. The grinding marks of UVG are wavy, wide, and shallow, and OGs are horizontal, with narrow and deep grooves. Also it was found that ultrasonic vibration grinding could improve the quality of the surface with lower roughness than normal grinding, and the surface roughness was reduced by more than 27%. The feed rate and spindle speed had significant effects on the surface roughness, accounting for 44.37% and 33.66%, respectively.