26 Int. J. Abrasive Technology, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2015 Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Appropriate application of pneumatic barrier for improving grinding performance Bijoy Mandal and Santanu Das* Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani-741235, West Bengal, India Email: bijoymandal@gmail.com Email: sdas.me@gmail.com *Corresponding author Simul Banerjee Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, West Bengal, India Email: simul_b@hotmail.com Abstract: High grinding zone temperature is the primary reason behind several grinding defects. To control thermal defects, usually large quantity of grinding fluid is employed. However, much of applied grinding fluid is reported to be wasted because of the development of a stiff air layer surrounding the rotating wheel. In the present experimental work, an indigenously introduced setup utilising a pneumatic barrier is used for controlling the adverse effect of stiff air layer formed around the grinding wheel. Different parameters of the pneumatic barrier setup are optimised by using response surface methodology (RSM). Further, experiments are performed in surface grinding with the provision of pneumatic barrier. It is observed that applying conventional grinding fluid by providing the pneumatic barrier at optimised condition, tangential and normal force components are reduced significantly, and favourable grinding chips and good ground surface is generated in comparison with the conventionally used flood cooling. Keywords: grinding; grinding fluid; air layer; response surface methodology; RSM; pneumatic barrier; grinding chip; surface roughness; grinding forces; ground surface; flood cooling nozzle; pneumatic barrier nozzle. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mandal, B., Das, S. and Banerjee, S. (2015) ‘Appropriate application of pneumatic barrier for improving grinding performance’, Int. J. Abrasive Technology, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.26–45. Biographical notes: Bijoy Mandal completed his MTech from Kalyani Government Engineering College under West Bengal University of Technology, West Bengal, India, in 2006. He was awarded Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering in the year of 2012 by Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He has been being serving in the Eastern Railway, India since 1998. He has a quite a good number of publications in various international journals and conferences. He has published papers in International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture, International Journal of Precision Technology,