Temperature rise and surface roughness of carbon fiber epoxy composites during cut-off grinding

Abstract

Although near net-shape molding of advanced composites is desirable, machining operations such as cutting, drilling and grinding on the advanced composite materials are frequently required for the composite structures to be employed for precision machine elements. During the composite machining operations, the temperature at the cutting point may increase beyond the allowed limit due to the low thermal conductivity of composites, which might degrade the properties of the composite. Therefore, in this work; the temperature at the cutting point was measured during the cut-off grinding of carbon fiber epoxy composites. The grinding force and surface roughness under both dry and wet grinding conditions were also measured with respect to grinding speed and in-feed rate to investigate the optimum cut-off grinding characteristics of the composites.