Abstract
A geometric theory is presented to enhance understanding of part wear and lay patterns generated during surface grinding, such as when a part is fed through a machine with a rotating circular abrasive disk. This theory uses the integrated relative speed between the part and the abrasive wheel, the swept arc length, as a wear measure. A dynamic simulation model was created in SIMULINK (TM) to evaluate the swept arc length computation at a single point, and a MATLAB (TM) script was used to provide initial conditions, spatially loop through the entire part surface, and evaluate the resultant part wear. Three common machine configurations have been dynamically modeled and evaluated using the swept arc length theory. Additionally, simulation results have been validated through comparison with industry professionals using the swept arc length as a wear measure.