Dynamic response of a rotating ball screw subject to a moving regenerative force in grinding

Abstract This paper investigates the dynamic response of a rotating ball screw subjected to a moving regenerative force. The rotating ball screw is modeled as a rotating Timoshenko shaft with simply supports. The moving regenerative force describes the nonlinear interactions including the effects of wheel wear, time-delay, and the possibility of contact loss between the grinding wheel head and screw. The assumed mode method together with Runge–Kutta method is employed to analyze the system dynamic response. The total grinding depth is suggested to divide into several passes from rough grinding to fine grinding for obtaining fine surface. The effect of parameters such as the depth of cut and the rotational speeds of grinding wheel and screw are discussed for each pass. The numerical results show that the critical depth of cut depends on the rotational speeds of screw and grinding wheel. If the more the depth of cut is smaller than the critical depth of cut, the earlier the chatter occurs and the faster the vibration grows.