A pneumatic sensor for grinding wheel condition monitoring

This paper presents the proof-of-concept of a pneumatic sensor for monitoring the performance of grinding wheels. The system concurrently considers the static and dynamic components of the back pressure signal, which refer to the position and topography of the functional wheel surface, respectively. Auxiliary experiments and numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate that the dynamic back pressure variations do indeed correspond to wheel topographic features. The performance of the sensor is evaluated with respect to wheel dressing, progressive wheel wear and grinding burn. The monitoring capability of the sensor is confirmed to be not compromised by the application of a flood coolant.