Experimentally validated atomistic simulation of the effect of relevant grinding parameters on work piece topography, internal stresses, and microstructure

In this work, we present a fully atomistic approach to modeling a finishing process with the goal to shed light on aspects of work piece development on the microscopic scale, which are difficult or even impossible to observe in experiments, but highly relevant for the resulting material behavior. In a large-scale simulative parametric study, we varied four of the most relevant grinding parameters: The work piece material, the abrasive shape, the temperature, and the infeed depth. In order to validate our model, we compared the normalized surface roughness, the power spectral densities, the steady-state contact stresses, and the microstructure with proportionally scaled macroscopic experimental results. Although the grain sizes vary by a factor of more than 1,000 between experiment and simulation, the characteristic process parameters were reasonably reproduced, to some extent even allowing predictions of surface quality degradation due to tool wear. Using the experimentally validated model, we studied time-resolved stress profiles within the ferrite/steel work piece as well as maps of the microstructural changes occurring in the near-surface regions. We found that blunt abrasives combined with elevated temperatures have the greatest and most complex impact on near-surface microstructure and stresses, as multiple processes are in mutual competition here.