ProstKuehl

Grinding is an essential manufacturing process for the production of, e. g., metallic or optical components. A high process speed requires an efficient cooling in order to avoid grinding burn. However, flow mechanisms for an efficient cooling lubricant (cl) supply are not yet known. Only heuristic optimization of the supplying cl jet flow was performed so far. To understand the flow mechanisms responsible for an efficient cooling of the grinding process, in-process-flow field measurements of the cl flow are necessary.

For this reason, the applicability of particle image velocimetry (PIV) in a grinding machine is investigated to determine the cooling lubricant flow velocity field. A big challenge is to achieve valid flow velocity field measurements due to the fluctuating refractive index field of the two-phase flow of cooling lubricant and air, which causes disturbing light refraction. Therefore the studied approach is to determine the flow field by a statistical evaluation of multiple PIV measurements. Furthermore, systematic and random measurement deviations due to light refraction are determined by a novel experimental technique which measures the resulting light deflections inside the cl flow. Based on these results, the feasibility of high-speed and stereoscopic PIV measurements is finally investigated.