Investigation of wheel wear mechanisms during grinding optical glasses through statistical analysis of wheel topography

The wheel topographies in the different stages during grinding fused silica and BK7 were measured on machine with a white light interferometer. Height parameters of 3D surface roughness, including maximum peak height, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis, were proposed to evaluate the wheel wear mechanisms during grinding the two types of optical glasses. The results show that wheel wear mechanisms are essentially determined by different material removal modes. BK7 and fused silica were predominantly ground in ductile mode and brittle mode respectively. The grinding of BK7 mainly causes severe attritious wear of grains. During grinding fused silica, self-sharpening effect makes grinding sustain for a long time.