Performance Comparison of Sol-gel with White Alumina Abrasives for Grinding of Super Duplex Stainless Steel (SDSS)

Super duplex stainless steel (SDSS) serves different applications in industry categories like oil and gas, offshore platforms, naval, nuclear, pharmaceutical, mining, etc. due to its high strength, resistance to pitting and stress corrosion cracking properties. The two-phase microstructure of SDSS along with the other alloying elements makes this a difficult-to-machine material. The above-mentioned applications require finished components with good dimensional accuracy and surface finish. Traditionally, grinding process is used as a final machining process to achieve the prescribed tolerance requirements. In the current industrial practice, the grinding wheel with fused white alumina grains is most widely used for finishing of ferrous components. In spite of its acceptance in industries, there is a need for an abrasive grain with extended redress life for grinding a wide variety of steel grades. To cater for this requirement, sol-gel alumina abrasive grains were introduced which has a prolonged redress life due to its high fracture toughness characteristics. In this paper, the performance of the sol-gel alumina grinding wheel is compared with the white alumina wheel for grinding of SDSS material. To compare the performances of both the grinding wheels, indices such as grinding force, specific grinding energy, surface roughness, grinding ratio, and grinding efficiency were calculated based on the experimental work. The results obtained indicate that grinding wheel with sol-gel alumina grains performed better than the fused white alumina grains.