Precision Grinding of Reaction Bonded Silicon Carbide Using Coarse Grain Size Diamond Wheels

Reaction bonded SiC（RBSiC） is attractive for optical application because of its favorable properties and low fabrication cost. However, the difficultness and cost involved in RBSiC grinding limit its application. The investigation on high efficient and low-cost machining with good grinding quality is desired. Generally, high efficient machining for RBSiC is realized by using coarse grain size grinding wheels, but serious grinding damage is inevitable. In this paper, monolayer nickel electroplated coarse grain size diamond grinding wheels with grain sizes of 46 μm, 91 μm, and 151 μm were applied to the grinding of RBSiC. An electrolytic in-process dressing（ELID） assisted conditioning technique was first developed by using cup shape copper bonded conditioning wheels with grain sizes of 15 μm and 91 μm to generate the conditioned coarse grain size wheels with minimized wheel run-out error within 2 μm, constant wheel peripheral envelop as well as top-flattened diamond grains. Then, the grinding experiments on RBSiC were carried out to investigate the grinding performance and material removal mechanism. The experimental results indicate that the developed conditioning technique is applicable and feasible to condition the coarse grain size diamond wheels under optimal conditioning parameters, and the material removal mechanism involved in RBSiC grinding is the combination of brittle fracture and ductile deformation to generate smooth ground surface. This research is significant for the high efficient and low-cost precision grinding of RBSiC with good ground surface quality.

Effect of the column height on the performance of liquid-solid fluidized bed for the separation of coarse slime

A liquid-solid fluidized bed separator, used for the separation of coarse slime, was developed. Test parti- cles sized in the range from 0.25 to 0.5, 0.5 to 1.0, and 0.25 to 1.0 mm were separated in the liquid-solid fluidized bed. Beds with column heights of 1200, 1500, and 1800 mm were tried. The clean coal and the railings were subsequently analyzed by float-sink testing. The results showed that the ash and yield of clean coal both decreased with increasing column height, for all three size fractions, and that the ash of the clean coal obtained from tests on the broader size fraction was less than that from the narrower sized fractions. The separation density decreased with increasing column height. The lowest E value was seen for a column height of 1500 ram, for which conditions the separation density was 1.45 g/cm3. The E value was 0.084 for the 0.25-0.5 mm fraction but the corresponding separation density was 1.48 g/cm3, and the E value 0.089, for the broader 0.25-1.0 mm fraction.

Development of a drill energy utilization index for aiding selection of drill machines in surface mines

Drill machines used in surface mines, particularly in coal, is characterized by a very poor utilization （around 40%） and low availability （around 60%）. The main purpose of this study is to develop a drill selec- tion methodology and simultaneously a performance evaluation technique based on drill cuttings produced and drilling rate achieved. In all 28 blast drilled through were investigated. The drilling was accomplished by 5 different drill machines of Ingersoll-Rand and Revathi working in coal mines of Sonepur Bazari （SECL） and Block-II （BCCL）. The drills are Rotary and Rotary Percussive type using tri- cone rock roller bits. Drill cuttings were collected and sieve analysis was done in the laboratory. Using Rosin Ramler Diagram, coarseness index （CI）, mean chip size （d）, specific-st trace area （SSA） and charac- teristic particle size distribution curves for all the holes drilled were plotted. The predictor equation for drill penetration rate established through multiple regressions was found to have a very good correlation with an index of determination of 0.85. A comparative analysis of particle size distribution curves was used to evaluate the drill efficiency. The suggested approach utilises the area under the curve, after the point of trend reversal and brittleness ratio of the respective bench to arrive at drill energy utilization index （DEUI）, for mapping of drill machine to bench, The developed DEU1 can aid in selecting or mapping a right machine to right bench for achieving higher penetration rate and utilizations.

OPTIMAL COARSE GRID SIZE IN DOMAIN DECOMPOSITION

In most domain decomposition (DD) methods, a coarse grid solve is employed to provide the global coupling required to produce an optimal method. The total cost of a method can depend sensitively on the choice of the coaxse grid size H. In this paper, we give a simple analysis of this phenomenon for a model elliptic problem and a variant of Smith's vertex space domain decomposition method [11, 3]. We derive the optimal value Hopt which asymptotically minimises the total cost of method (number of floating point operations in the sequential case and execution time in the parallel case), for subdomain solvers with different complekities. Using the value of Hopt, we derive the overall complexity of the DD method, which can be significantly lower than that of the subdomain solver