Accepted Manuscript

A model-based cooling strategy for motorized spindle to reduce thermal errors

Srinivas N. Grama, Ashvarya Mathur, Ashok N. Badhe

PII: S0890-6955(18)30081-6
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2018.04.004
Reference: MTM 3340

To appear in: International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture

Received Date: 8 January 2018

Revised Date: 12 April 2018
Accepted Date: 16 April 2018

Please cite this article as: S.N. Grama, A. Mathur, A.N. Badhe, A model-based cooling strategy for
motorized spindle to reduce thermal errors, International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture
(2018), doi: 10.1016/j.ijmachtools.2018.04.004.

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 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

A model-based cooling strategy for motorized spindle to reduce

thermal errors
Srinivas N. Gramaa,∗, Ashvarya Mathura , Ashok N. Badhea
a Dr. Kalam center for innovation, Bharat Fritz Werner Ltd.,
Off Tumkur road, Bengaluru 560022, India

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∗ Correspondingauthor
Email address: srinivas.gn@bfw.co.in (Srinivas N. Grama)

Preprint submitted to International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture April 18, 2018
 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

A model-based cooling strategy for motorized spindle to reduce

thermal errors

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Abstract

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Thermal errors constitute a significant portion of overall machining errors observable on any ma-
chined component, especially if produced through high-speed machining. Major reasons for these

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thermal errors are from the distortion of the spindle and/or other machine tool components from
their respective reference positions, which in turn, is due to change in temperature of machine tool
components. The heat generation within the spindle due to internal sources such as motor and

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bearings can be regarded as the main culprit, especially at high cutting speeds. Although conven-
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tionally, cooler units with Ambient temperature Tracing Strategy (ATS) are employed to extract
heat from the spindle, they are not very effective when accuracy and precision of machined compo-
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nents are of utmost importance. In this paper, research work is presented wherein, the effectiveness
of cooling is significantly improved by employing a model-based control strategy on a traditional
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bath recirculation cooler unit. This strategy, called Cooler Trigger Model (CTM), involves dynam-
ically controlling the switching frequency and the switch ’ON’ time of cooler compressor so that
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the heat extraction is in accordance with the heat generation. Specifically, the approach is based on
a macro model involving a combined heat power and energy criteria wherein the former criterion
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is analogous to a conventional ’ON-OFF’ controller with the exception that the field variable is
chosen as heat rate (extraction with respect to generation) instead of temperature. Meanwhile, the
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heat energy criterion pitches in to limit cooling in the spindle due to a few design and operational
constraints. In order to illustrate the effectiveness of CTM strategy, a comparative mathematical
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analysis of ATS and CTM cooling strategies is performed for Environment Temperature Variation
Error (ETVE) test. Further, it is shown that CTM strategy is advantageous with respect to the
motor and bearing temperature stabilization for a wide range of spindle speeds, thereby leading to
significant reduction of thermal errors when compared with ATS.
Keywords: Thermal error reduction, Motorized spindle, Cooling strategy, Macro model

Preprint submitted to International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture April 18, 2018
 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

1 1. Introduction

2 Technological progress of machine tool industry can be estimated on the basis of observed
3 accuracy, precision and surface finish of the machined product. For general-purpose machining so-
4 lutions, a tolerance of less than 50 µm has become a norm in the industry, thanks to the efforts taken

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5 to minimize errors during machine design and building stages. However, there is an ever-increasing
6 need for higher accuracies and more importantly, increased precision than the one stated above. It

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7 is therefore pertinent for machine tool builders and researchers alike to understand the reason for
8 variations produced during the machining process through detailed analysis and hence reduce er-

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9 rors significantly from the final machined product every single time. The errors mainly responsible
10 for the reduced precision of machined products are: geometric, thermal, tool wear related, cutting
force induced and fixture related errors. Among them, mainly geometric issues are minimized by

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12 taking several precautions during manufacturing and machine assembly stage before finally cali-
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brating according to the ISO standards ([1, 2], for instance) by machine tool builders. Some of
14 the major errors which are not conventionally tested and considered during the machine building
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15 stage are errors because of thermal, tool-wear related and cutting force induced deformation issues.
16 Bryan and other researchers have estimated that thermal errors alone contributes around 40 to 70%
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17 of all machining errors [3]. Thermal errors are observed due to temporal temperature differences,
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18 which in turn, are because of heat sources in the machine tool and changes in environmental con-
19 ditions. The internal heat sources are from spindle motors, axes servo motors, friction at contact
20 points within the moving members of the machine tool, accessories such as coolant, lubrication
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21 pumps, hydraulic and pneumatic actuators. Therefore, techniques to reduce, and ideally, eliminate
22 thermal errors have become an active area of research [4, 5].
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23 Among machine tool components, motorized spindle gets affected the most by thermal effects,
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24 especially during high-speed cutting. The main reason is the introduction of an electromagnet or
25 permanent magnet motor within the spindle unit to realize high-speed machining operation. The
26 introduction of a motor within the spindle eliminates the need for power transmitting elements
27 such as the belt or gear drives and therefore reduces power loss. However, this does not completely
28 eliminate power loss as all of the input power is not converted into mechanical work due to electrical
29 and magnetic losses at the motor. This power loss is reflected in the form of heat at the motor region;
30 the higher the load or speed requirement on the motor, the higher is the heat power and vice versa.

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31 Another major heat source within the motorized spindle is the friction at the bearing contact points.
32 Heat generation within the bearing depends on numerous design and operation factors such as the
33 bearing type, configuration, design preload, type of lubrication, lubricant’s property and quantity
34 and actual cutting loads [6]. In order to limit the build-up of temperature and its gradient within
the bearing, air-oil or oil-mist lubrication are typically used for high speed applications; however

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36 for low and medium speed usage, grease-lubricated angular contact bearings suffice. In addition
to these two internal heat sources, another heat source for the motorized spindle is from external

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38 factors such as the change in ambient temperature. Due to these three factors, motorized spindles
are highly prone to thermal disturbances leading to thermal errors.

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40 Thermal errors are too large to be ignored and needs to be accounted either during the design
41 stage or during operation to improve precision of machined products. As the heat generation during

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42 machining process is inevitable, the primary goal is to reduce the sensitivity of heat flow onto the
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resulting machining precision to be as low as possible. This is usually done through the following
two ways: the first is to employ strategies so that thermal distortion is reduced at the source, while
the next is to compensate electronically for the expected thermal distortion. The former way of
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46 reducing thermal error at the source is an effective method as thermal issues are addressed at the
source. For instance, a recent work by Ge and Ding [7] controls thermal error at the source through
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48 an intelligent assembly of thermoelectric modules and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP)
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49 bars on spindle housing. Contrasting to this methodology of reducing thermal errors, in the latter
50 methodology, electronic compensation is performed a posteriori for the expected thermal distortion
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51 of the spindle shaft. In thermal compensation methodology, a model is built using various real-
52 time field variables such as spindle speed, load, cooling power, temperatures and their history
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53 at numerous points within the spindle and machine tool structures including bed, column, axes
54 motors and others. A model which typically relates the field variables to Tool Center Point (TCP)
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55 displacements, is then trained through a large set of experiments. For instance, a few commonly
56 used modeling frameworks include regression, support vector regression, transfer function, neural
57 networks, and hybrid approaches. Although these models are validated from experiments, an open
58 issue, however, is on the question of robustness, which a few recent works have tried to address
59 [8, 9]. A comprehensive review of various compensation techniques can be found in [5, 10].
60 From a designers’ perspective, one hypothetical way to reduce thermal errors is to replace the

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61 structural material of spindle from steel to a material which has a very low coefficient of thermal
62 expansion, such as Invar, so that the generated heat does not lead to thermal distortion of the spin-
63 dle. For instance, experimental spindles have been developed from fiber reinforced plastics to result
64 in 15 times lesser thermal distortion than that of steel spindle [11]. Another similar work was to
employ super Invar alloy material for tool holder and again thermal characteristics were found to

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66 be much better [12]. However, these strategies have a disadvantage of high capital cost and thus
have a little scope of being commercialized. Another way to reduce thermal errors is to design

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68 the spindle structure thermo-symmetrically so that the generated heat is conducted onto the spindle
structure in an axisymmetric fashion. However, temperature still builds up in the spindle during

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70 heavy cutting or high-speed machining operation leading to significant thermal distortion of spin-
71 dle shaft. Therefore, motorized spindle manufacturers employ an external cooler unit to dissipate

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72 heat through forced convection. Specifically, a cooler unit with recirculating oil flow is used to
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suppress heating effects, usually through a two-level temperature controller. The working principle
is either based on Ambient temperature Tracking Strategy (ATS) or on a fixed temperature strategy
and functions similar to a household refrigerator, i.e., the frequency of switching ’ON/OFF’ of the
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76 cooler unit compressor depends on the observed reservoir bath and/or ambient temperature. In the
latter strategy, the coolant is maintained at a fixed temperature irrespective of machining or the
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78 ambient condition; while in the former, the coolant is maintained at the ambient temperature and as
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79 ambient changes, so does the coolant. Typical hysteresis for these controllers is ± 1.5 ◦ C. Although
80 these strategies enable heat extraction so that temperature does not build up to dangerous limits, a
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81 significant amount of mechanical distortion is observed. This is due to the unsynchronized dissipa-
82 tion of heat with respect to the generated heat, thereby allowing the residual heat to get conducted
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83 onto the surrounding spindle and machine tool structure and increase temperature levels. Another
84 recent variant of the cooler trigger strategy is to employ sophisticated servo-valves, pumps, coolant
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85 units, blenders and Proportional-Integral-Differential (PID) controllers so that the cooling power
86 is either kept constant [13] or dynamically varied through real-time changes in coolant inlet tem-
87 perature and flow rate in order to match the heat extraction rate with the real-time heat generation
88 rate [14]. Very recently, an extension of this idea called active coolant strategy is introduced in
89 [15] in order to accommodate the variation of ambient temperature thus dispensing the requirement
90 of a precise temperature controlled environment. In these strategies, coolant is maintained at two

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91 different temperatures: one at a lower level and the other at a higher level, and depending on the
92 cooling power requirement, they are appropriately blended before circulating through the spindle.
93 However, implementation of this system in a general industrial setting is difficult and requires high
94 capital investment for deploying sophisticated hardware and software which includes several servo
valves and PID controllers.

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96 Thermo-mechanical behavior of spindle as a function of the cooling system being employed

has become a topical area of research. Weber and Weber [16] performed thermo-energetic analysis

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98 and network-based simulation of the cooling system used for a motorized spindle, which was later
extended to a complete machining center’s cooling system from an energy, power and heat flow

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100 standpoint in [17]. Chien and Jang [18] numerically and experimentally analyzed the fluid flow
101 motion and temperature distribution in a motorized spindle built with a helical cooling channel. Liu

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102 et al [19] developed an analytical model to predict thermal errors in a motorized spindle. They also
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performed fluid-thermal-structural coupled simulation in a numerical framework and optimized
heat transfer coefficients at various regions including the bearing and motor areas using the experi-
mental data. Wu and Tan [20] developed an integrated thermo-mechanical model for the motorized
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106 spindle and using this they optimized the design of cylindrical coolant channels. In these works,
typically cylindrical or helical-type coolant channels are being employed. However, Xia et al [21]
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108 developed a fractal tree-like network heat sink in cooling sleeve and showed that the effectiveness
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109 of cooling is much higher than helical-type cooling channel. Zust et al. [22] developed macro
110 models for heat generation and dissipation mechanisms in a motorized spindle and implemented
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111 them using two approaches: energy flow-based and transient temperature distribution-based. They
112 showed that average spindle temperature can be estimated fairly accurately using simple energy-
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113 flow based model thereby reducing the computational time and effort typically required for transient
114 temperature distribution-based approaches. Although these works involve the study, analysis and
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115 optimization of cooling systems with a liquid coolant employed, some studies have also been done
116 through numerical modeling to understand the effectiveness of an air coolant system at the cutting
117 zone instead of the typically used flush coolant [23].
118 Departing from the outlined strategies, the present work is related to the development of a novel
119 control strategy, called Cooler Trigger Model (CTM), to trigger the compressor of a traditional bath
120 recirculation cooler unit in such a way that it improves the effectiveness of heat dissipation from

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121 motorized spindle and in turn reduce thermal disturbances at the source. The strategy works on the
122 basis of heat power and energy criteria. The principle idea of the strategy is to adaptively control the
123 switching frequency as well as the switch ’ON’ duration of the cooler compressor so that the heat
124 extraction is in accordance with the heat generation albeit to a certain extent due to limitations with
respect to rapid cooling or heating capabilities. The main advantage of CTM strategy is its low-cost

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126 deployment on a traditional bath recirculation cooler unit, unlike requirements for sophisticated
hardware and software for systems developed in [13, 14, 15] resulting in higher capital investment

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128 and operating costs. Further details of CTM strategy are provided in the remainder of the paper,
which is organized as follows: Section 2 briefs the core idea and working principle of the CTM

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130 strategy while Section 3 describes the experimental setup, which includes a stand-alone motorized
131 spindle and an in-house developed metrology fixture for estimating thermal distortion including

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132 expansion and tilt of spindle during high-speed operation as well. Section 4 provides a comparative
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mathematical analysis of ATS and CTM cooling strategies for ETVE test while Section 5 details the
actual experimental profiles and results obtained from these tests using CTM strategy and compares
them with ATS under no-load conditions. Section 6 discusses the obtained results and puts in
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136 context with the state-of-the-art cooling methodologies and finally, a few concluding remarks are
offered in Section 7.
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138 2. Working principle of CTM strategy

139 Nomenclature :
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140 Q̇m : Instantaneous heat generation rate at motor in Watts

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141 Q̇b : Instantaneous heat generation rate at bearings in Watts

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142 Q̇g : Total instantaneous heat generation rate in Watts

143 Qg : Total heat generation in Joules

144 Q̇m
g : Modified total instantaneous heat generation rate in Watts

145 Qm
g : Total modified heat generation in Joules

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c Qm : Modified total heat generation within one cooler switching cycle in Joules (i.e., be-
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147 tween successive compressor ’ON’ or ’OFF’ states)

148 Q̇dm : Heat dissipation from the motor region in Watts

Q̇db : Heat dissipation from bearings in Watts

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150 Q̇d : Total heat extraction rate from the coolant in Watts

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151 Qd : Total heat extraction from the coolant in Joules

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cQ : Heat extraction from the coolant within one cooler switching cycle in Joules
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153 Cs : State of compressor (0 =⇒ ’OFF’ and 1 =⇒ ’ON’)

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154 τ : Incremental time counter in seconds which is reset when the value of Cs is changed

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τm : Minimum time in seconds between two consecutive compressor ’ON’ states
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156 ∆t : Sampling time in seconds

157 t : Total time counter in seconds

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158 (•)s : Material or geometric property associated with motorized spindle

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159 The core idea relates to the development of a cooling strategy for a traditional bath recirculation
160 cooler unit so that thermal errors are reduced through effective cooling. The strategy is based
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161 on minimizing the deviation between real-time heat generation and its corresponding extraction
162 through dynamically controlled cooling. The cooling power is synchronized with the real-time
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163 heat generation rate through adaptive switching frequency and switch ’ON’ time of the cooler
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164 compressor unit using a combined heat power and energy criteria. The adaptive nature of CTM
165 strategy provides the following convenience: when the heat generation rate is high, the compressor
166 will switch ’ON’ until dissipation exceeds generation rate following the power criterion; while
167 the energy criterion is activated to limit cooling under certain operating conditions. However,
168 synchronization is only possible to a certain extent due to the limited capability of rapid cooling in
169 traditional bath recirculation cooler units. Thus, the heat power criterion of CTM strategy is similar
170 to a conventional ’ON-OFF’ controller but with an exception that the field variable is chosen as

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171 heat rate instead of the conventionally employed variable, i.e., temperature. The energy criterion is
172 added to the model in order to limit the cooling and ensure that condensation does not occur either
173 inside motor or bearing regions.
174 A pre-requisite to the proposed model-based control strategy is the estimation of real-time heat
generation and corresponding heat dissipation. Empirical and physics-based models are used to

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176 compute the above-mentioned quantities and are described as follows: the heat generation in the
motor region is mainly because of magnetic and electrical losses, which is estimated as:

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Q̇m = (1 − η) P Pr , (1)

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178 where, η is the mechanical efficiency of motor, P is the proportional load on the motor and Pr is

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179 the rated power. It is highlighted that Pr is not a constant value but depends on whether the motor
is built with a combination of low and high windings or with a single winding alone and in turn
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on the motors’ torque-speed characteristics. In contrast to the motor, heat generation at bearings is
182 mainly due to friction at the bearing contact points. Specifically, a combination of torque due to the
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183 applied load (because of machining), the viscous friction because of grease lubrication in bearings
184 and finally, spinning motion [6, 24]. The torque due to the applied load in Nmm is given by M1
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185 = f1 Fβ dm , where f1 = z( CFsr )y is a factor which depends on the design of the bearing and relative
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186 bearing load, dm is the pitch diameter of bearing in mm, Fs is the static equivalent load, Cr is the
187 basic static load rating, z = 0.001 and y = 0.33 for angular contact bearing [6] and Fβ is the axial
load in Newton. The viscous friction torque, Mv , is empirically expressed by Palmgren [24] as a
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189 function of grease kinematic viscosity and spindle speed as,

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
10−7 f0 (νN) 32 dm3 , νN > 2000

Mv = (2)
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160 × 10−7 f0 d 3 ,

νN ≤ 2000 ,
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190 where, ν is the kinematic viscosity in centiStokes, N is the spindle speed in rpm and f0 = 4 for
191 a pair of angular contact grease lubricated bearings [6]. It is to be noted that at high speeds, i.e.
192 at dm N ratios (bore diameter in mm multiplied by spindle speed in rpm) greater than 500,000, the
193 friction because of spinning motion, Ms becomes significant. Hence, the total friction torque is

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194 computed as, M = M1 + Mv + Ms , and the total heat generation rate at the bearings in Watts is [6]:

Q̇b = 1.047 × 10−4 N M . (3)

195 It is thus seen that the heat generation from bearing not only depends on the real-time spindle speed

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196 and load, but also on the design factors such as bearing configuration, preload, size and lubrication
197 type. Finally, the total heat power is computed as the sum of heat generation from motor and

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198 bearings as,
Q̇g = Q̇m + Q̇b . (4)

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199 In contrast to the heat generation rate, the heat extraction rate can be directly computed by measur-
200 ing the temperature of the coolant fluid that enters and exits the spindle. For a specific case of the

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201 existing spindle design, a part of the coolant fluid that enters the spindle motor region will return
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after cooling, while the remaining part will cool the front bearing region and then will return back
to the cooler unit. Thus, the heat extraction rate from the motor region is estimated as,
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Q̇dm = ṁ C p ∆Tm , (5)
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204 where, ṁ is the mass flow rate of the coolant fluid in motor region in kg/s, C p is the specific heat
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205 capacity of the fluid in J/kg◦ K and ∆Tm is the temperature difference of the coolant between the
206 entry and the exit of motor region. Similarly, the heat extraction rate from the bearing region can
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207 be computed as,

Q̇db = ṁb C p ∆Tb , (6)
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208 where ṁb is the mass flow rate of coolant entering bearing region and ∆Tb is the temperature
difference of coolant between the entry and exit of the bearing region. The total heat extraction
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210 rate is then computed as the sum of rates from bearing and motor regions:

Q̇d = Q̇db + Q̇dm . (7)

211 It is to be noted that the heat conduction or convection between different parts of spindle, natural
212 heat convection from the spindle housing and heat radiation effects are neglected in Eqn. 7. Al-

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213 though, some amount of heat is extracted through the coolant, residual heat is used up to increase
214 the temperature levels in spindle due to conduction, thereby enhancing the internal energy of the
215 spindle. This heat transfer mode is inevitable as the forced convection through coolant is not at the
216 source of heat generation, but far away from it. Further discussion on this aspect is provided in
Section 4. From the heat conservation equation,

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(Q̇g − Q̇d ) ∂T
s
= ρ s Csp − ∇ · (ks ∇T ) , (8)

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218 where, ρ s , Csp , ks and V s are the density, specific heat, thermal conductivity and volume of the

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219 spindle, i.e., alloy steel material respectively, and ∇ · ∇ is the Laplace operator. However, it is not
220 the object of present work to estimate the transient temperature distribution of spindle. Since the

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221 real-time temperature distribution of spindle varies with respect to environmental and operating
condition and is not known, the increase in internal energy of spindle is empirically accounted in
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this preliminary work through modification in the estimated total heat generation as follows,
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Q̇m
g = k Q̇g , (9)
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224 where, k < 1, is an empirical factor. Once all the heating and cooling power quantities are com-
puted, the next step is to estimate the corresponding energy quantities. Here, it is to be noted that
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226 the energy quantities are computed for every cooler ’ON-OFF’ cycle. This quantity is specifically
227 used to limit the amount of cooling. The total modified heat energy generated within a cooler cy-
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228 cle can be directly computed using the total modified heat generation rate and incremental time
229 information as,
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Z
c
Qm
g = Q̇m
g dτ. (10)
τ
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230 It is to be noted that the time counter τ is incremental, i.e., it resets when the state of the cooler
231 compressor is changed, i.e. from ’ON’ to ’OFF’ condition or vice-versa. Similarly, overall heat
232 generation can be computed as:
Z
Qm
g = Q̇m
g dt, (11)
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233 where, t is the total time. In a similar manner, the heat extraction within a cooler cycle, c Qd ,
234 and overall heat extraction, Qd , are computed using cooling power and the incremental/total time

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235 respectively.
236 The crux of CTM strategy is to effectively control the switching of the compressor unit, Cs ⊂
237 [0, 1], so that the deviation between the area under heating and cooling power curves is minimized
238 considering the constraints of cooler capability in a traditional bath recirculation cooler unit. Math-
ematically, this can be posed as an optimization problem wherein the objective is to find Cs (t)

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240 such that the total heat extraction is made almost equal to modified heat generation, subject to
constraints:

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241 Z 
Q̇m

min g − Q̇ d (Cs ) dt
Cs ⊂{0,1} t
(12)

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subject to τ > τm .

242 The working principle of the CTM strategy is illustrated through Figure 1 and is explained as fol-
lows: when the CNC machine tool and controller is switched ’ON’, two time counters, t and τ,

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244 are initialized and compressor of the cooler unit is set to ’OFF’ mode, i.e., Cs ← 0. The CNC pa-
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rameters such as spindle speed, N, and load, P, are read into the in-house PythonTM code through
246 FOCAS (FANUC Open CNC API Specification) dynamically linked library files to estimate the
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247 real-time heat generation. Further, the temperature of the coolant that enters and exits the spindle
248 unit is recorded through a data acquisition system and read into the code using Modbus protocol.
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249 Then, coolant properties such as specific heat, C p , and mass flow rate, ṁ, are computed using a
pre-computed look-up table for an average coolant temperature, Tc,avg , found within the spindle
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251 unit. Cooling power and energy quantities are then computed. This approach of estimation of heat
252 generation and dissipation can be generalized for any design of spindle as it involves measurement
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253 of real-time spindle speed, load and coolant entry and exit temperatures. Next, the corresponding
254 logics for power and energy criteria are checked depending upon the current state of cooler com-
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255 pressor (i.e., Cs = 0 or Cs = 1). For instance, if Cs = 0, i.e., the compressor is currently ’OFF’,
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256 the power and the energy conditions are examined. Even if either of the criteria is satisfied, the
257 compressor is switched ’ON’ along with the reset of timer τ. However, before the compressor is
258 switched ’ON’, it is ensured that the elapsed time after last switch ’OFF’ is greater than τm seconds.
259 This condition will ensure that the life of compressor unit is not reduced due to its high frequency
260 of switching. Similarly, other relevant logics as per Fig. 1 are checked if the compressor is already
261 in a switched ’ON’ condition in order to switch it ’OFF’. The logics described above are exam-
262 ined every ∆t seconds using the real-time logger and CNC data. The threshold L, also known as

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263 deadband in control theory literature, is used to limit the overshoot/undershoot; while Qcr is the
264 threshold used for energy criterion.

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Figure 1: Schematic illustration of the working principle of CTM with combined power and energy criteria for
adaptively controlling the cooler compressor unit.
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265 3. Experimental details and measurement procedure

266 The experimental set-up includes a stand-alone motorized spindle rigidly clamped on a metallic
267 V-block (Figs. 2, 3). The spindle is isolated from the rest of the machine tool structure to prevent it
268 from getting thermally influenced. The spindle is supported through angular contact bearings (refer
269 Table 1 for detailed specification), which are arranged in a double ’◦’-configuration and provisions

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270 are made to cool the front bearing and stator portion of the motor region through a recirculation-
271 type cooler unit (refer Table 2). In addition to the three coolant temperature measurement points
272 for the coolant entry and exit as noted in Section 2, sixteen Pt100 Resistance Temperature Detector
273 (RTD) sensors are affixed at several critical points in the spindle: four each in outer race of front
bearings (FB1 and FB2), five in outer race of rear bearings (RB1 and RB2), one each for motor

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275 coil, ambient and spindle housing. Holes are drilled from the circumference of the spindle housing
to the outer race of the bearings in order to place the temperature sensors on the outer race of

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277 bearings. In order to ensure that these holes do not interfere with the functioning of the spindle, the
locations of sensors had to be different at the bearings. To complement temperature measurement,

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279 thermal distortion is estimated through non-contact high precision capacitive displacement sensors
280 developed by MTI instruments®, USA. For this, a precision ground disk is rigidly clamped onto

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281 spindle shaft in order to act as its extension. Further, a steel fixture is designed to mount capacitive
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sensors at three designated points (Fig. 4; sensors Sa , Sb and Sc ) so that the spindle distortion
is estimated by measuring the change in the distance between sensor face and the rotating disk.
The main advantages of using this set-up over the conventional five-point method are the ability to
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285 measure distortion at high speeds due to the reduced overhang of the spindle shaft, in addition to
dispensing the requirement of the high precision mandrel and steel sphere artifacts [25].
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Table 1: Nomenclature of FAG bearing used in spindle. For further details, the interested reader is referred to FAG
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bearings manual [26].

Bearing Type Nomenclature

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Front XC7014 EDLR TP4S UL

Rear XC7011 E TP4S UL
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Table 2: Detailed specifications of the traditional bath recirculation cooler unit made by Habor precise Inc. with ATS
control strategy.
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Model Habor HBO-H1000PTSB

Cooling capacity 4350 W
Temp. controller ATS
Coolant type ISO-VG32 oil

287 Experiments are performed under no-load condition and resulting thermal displacements are
288 measured using precision capacitive displacement sensors. The displacements recorded from sen-

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Figure 2: A precision ground disk is fixed on the spindle shaft as its extension. High precision displacement sensors
are fixed in a separate steel fixture (Fig. 3) in order to measure spindle distortion through the disc. To
complement this, nineteen temperature sensors are affixed at various points to measure their evolution.
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289 sors, Sa , Sb and Sc , assigned as Da , Db and Dc respectively, are then transformed to obtain thermal
290 expansion, ∆z, pitch and yaw angles (γx and γy , respectively) of the spindle, using the following
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291 matrix equation:     

1 0 −R0 ∆z D
     a
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1 −R0 cos 30◦ R0 sin 30◦   γx  = Db  , (13)

    
    
1 R0 cos 30 ◦ R0 sin 30 ◦ γy Dc
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292 where, R0 is the radius at which sensors are mounted from the axis of the spindle, Da , Db and Dc
represent the change in distance between sensors’ face and the precision disk face from the start
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293

294 of the experiment. The sign convention is chosen such that the spindle axis, i.e., Z- direction, is
295 positive if the displacement is away from the disk and vice-versa (Refer Fig. 2). In order to verify
296 the advantages of CTM strategy for various internal heat generation cycles, the motorized spindle
297 is operated using ATS strategy as well. Therefore, the traditional bath recirculation cooler unit is
298 modified so that the control strategy can be switched between ATS and CTM using a double pole
299 switch.

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Figure 3: Actual experimental set-up shows a stand-alone motorized spindle clamped on a V-block. The actual fixture
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used to mount displacement sensors is also shown.

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Figure 4: Spindle distortion is measured through three high precision capacitive displacement sensors, Sa , Sb and Sc
on the precision ground disk. The sensors are placed at a distance R0 from the axis. Basically, the change in
gap distance between sensor face and the disk is used for distortion measurement (Figure not to scale).

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300 4. Mathematical analysis of ATS and CTM strategies

301 In this Section, the ATS and CTM cooling strategies are compared for an experiment subjected
302 only to ambient temperature variation (N = 0 rpm). This kind of testing is similar to Environment
303 Temperature Variation Error (ETVE) test prescribed in [25]. The time duration is chosen to be 24-

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304 hours as this matches with the periodicity of a typical day-night cycle. The emphasis of this study
305 is to understand not only the effect of ambient temperature but also the cooling strategy employed

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306 on the thermo-mechanical behavior of the motorized spindle. For this analysis, lumped system
307 assumption can be made as the internal heat generation is null during the experiment, and hence

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308 Eqn. 8 reduces to,
dT
−h A (T − Tamb (t)) = ρ s Csp V s , (14)
dt

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309 where h is the convection heat transfer from the spindle because of combined effect of natural
310

311
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convection and forced cooling and Tamb is the ambient temperature which is a function of time.
In order to verify that lumped analysis is indeed realistic, Biot’s number, Bi is computed as Bi =
Vs h
≈ 0.014, using an average h = 30 W/m2 K. Biot’s number being lower than 0.1 implies that
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312
A ks
313 significant temperature gradients do not exist within the spindle. Hence, this approximation leads
to reduction of a general second order Partial Differential Equation (PDE) to a first order Ordinary
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314

315 Differential Equation (ODE) (Eqn. 14), which in turn greatly simplifies solution effort. Further,
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316 Eqn. 14 can be recast as,

dT
Z + T = Tamb (t) , (15)
dt
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ρ s Csp V s
317 where Z = hA is the average time constant of the spindle. This ODE now can be solved using
318 Laplace transform approach using the initial condition obtained from the experiment. However, in
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319 reality, even during idling, the cooling compressor switches ’ON’ and ’OFF’ intermittently. Due
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320 to this, h undergoes some cyclic change, which in turn reflects onto time constant, Z. The effect
321 of this compressor switching cycle on the resulting ∆z can be studied for a typical switching cycle
322 (Tamb mostly remains constant during a typical switching cycle). Hence, Eqn. 15 becomes,

dT
Z(t) + T = Tamb , (16)
dt

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323 which can be solved using numerical techniques such as Runge-Kutta (RK) method. Once the spin-
324 dle temperature, T (t) is evaluated, the thermal expansion, ∆z can be predicted in a straightforward
325 manner using coefficient of thermal expansion, α and reference material length L [27]:

(∆z) p = α L (T − T (0)) . (17)

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326 The details of ETVE test are presented in Sub-section 4.1, while the corresponding prediction of T

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327 and ∆z obtained through the solution of Eqns. 15 and 16 are provided in Sub-section 4.2.

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328 4.1. Experimental details of ETVE test

329 Temperatures from RTD sensors are acquired every ∆t seconds while displacements are es-
timated every 600 seconds for a total time period of 24 hours. The evolution of ambient tem-

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330

331 perature, Tamb , average coolant temperature, Tc,avg , average front and rear bearing temperatures,
332 Tf = ∑8i=1 Ti /8, Tr = ∑13
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i=9 Ti /5, respectively are computed and plotted along with thermal expan-

333 sion, ∆z in Fig. 5. It is clearly seen that Tf and Tr are close to each other for both ATS and CTM
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334 cooling strategies, thus justifying the assumption of lumped system analysis. It is observed that
335 Tc,avg follows Tamb closely for ATS strategy; while in CTM, although Tc,avg follows Tamb , but at
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336 a reduced global amplitude (Tc,avg cycling is only about 6◦ C). Further, it is noted that perturba-
tions in Tc,avg are reduced for CTM when compared with ATS strategy, thanks to the corresponding
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337

338 reduction in hysteresis in the former strategy. These perturbations in Tc,avg also result in higher
339 fluctuation in Tf and Tr for ATS, as can be seen from thicker line in Fig. 5 when compared with
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340 CTM. This reduced hysteresis in CTM strategy is because the cooling compressor is following the
341 heat power and energy criteria, which in turn leads to corresponding reduction of the compressor
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342 ’ON’ time combined with increased switching frequency. For instance, the average ’ON’ time is 60
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343 and 20 seconds for ATS and CTM strategies respectively; while the corresponding switching time
344 periods are 410 and 110 seconds. It is hereby reinforced that the CTM strategy has proportionately
345 reduced the average ’ON’ time as well as total time period to result in reduced perturbations in the
346 evolution of spindle temperature and ∆z when compared with ATS. Although the evolution of ∆z is
347 mostly in sync with Tamb for both strategies, the perturbations observed in temperatures evolution
348 is in turn reflected through high-frequency components of ∆z for ATS strategy. It is observed over
349 24-hours that when Tamb cycles with about 8◦ C variation, the corresponding change in ∆z is slightly

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350 greater than 20 µm for both ATS and CTM strategies. As ∆z of greater than 20 µm is observed
351 even for ETVE test, it is presumed that during low heat generating machining operation, ambient
352 temperature (and its slope) will play a vital role in the actual thermal distortion due to its propor-
353 tionately higher contribution. In order to reduce the effect of ambient conditions on actual spindle
rotation experiments, two time slots are identified (’Slot-1’ and ’Slot-2’, refer Fig. 5). The slots are

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354

355 chosen in a duration wherein the slope of Tamb as well as ∆z changes its sign.

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Figure 5: The evolution of (a) Tf and Tr , (b) Tamb and Tc,avg and (c) ∆z over a 24-hour day-night cycle for ATS (left)
and CTM (right) strategies during ETVE test.
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356 4.2. Numerical predictions of T and (∆z) p

In order to predict the global behavior of experimentally measured temperatures and ∆z for
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357

358 the ETVE test (Refer Fig. 5), the ODE described in Eqn. 15 is solved by taking help of Laplace
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359 transformation using the initial condition (T(0) = 21.9◦ C) obtained from the CTM experimental
360 data. As the global trend is similar for ATS and CTM strategies, only the CTM experimental data
361 is used to obtain numerical solutions. The ambient temperature Tamb variation for CTM strategy is
362 expressed through a functional form using Fourier series approximation to aid the solution process.
363 A 4-term approximation ensures an R2 fit of 0.99 and is therefore employed. The details of the
364 obtained coefficients are provided in Table 3. The resulting Eqn. 15 is then solved to obtain T (t)

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365 and in turn, (∆z) p , which are then compared with the corresponding measured quantities from CTM
366 experiment. It is clearly seen from Fig. 6 that the predicted spindle temperature T is not able to
367 match well with experimentally measured Tf especially in the latter half of the experiment, which
368 might be due to the changing boundary conditions not incorporated in Eqn. 15. Specifically, it is to
be noted that h is considered constant at 30 W/m2 K; however, h, in general, is non-linear in nature

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369

370 and is a reflection of changing operating conditions including varying ambient conditions, i.e., h is
a function of thermal conductivity of air, which in turn is dependent on Tamb .

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371

Table 3: The fitted 4-term Fourier series coefficients for Tamb (t) obtained from CTM experiment.

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Tamb ≈ A0 + A1 cos(wt) + B1 sin(wt) + A2 cos(2wt) + B2 sin(2wt)
+ A3 cos(3wt) + B3 sin(3wt) + A4 cos(4wt) + B4 sin(4wt)
A0 = 25.7 B1 = -4.234

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A1 = 2.24 B2 = -0.72
A2 = -5.38 B3 = 2.59
A3 = -1.02
A4 = 0.026
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w = 4.06 × 10−5
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Figure 6: The predicted spindle temperature T (t) is unable to match well with the experimentally measured spindle
bearing temperature due to the changing boundary conditions, which is not incorporated while solving Eqn.
15. Due to this reason, the prediction of ∆z also does not match well with the experiment.

372 The next step is to understand how the differences in cooling strategies of ATS and CTM are
373 affecting the thermal behavior of spindle. As noted earlier, due to the different cooling strategies

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374 ATS and CTM employ, the switch ’ON’ time and time period are quite different (the average ’ON’
375 time and time period for CTM strategy is approximately one-third of ATS strategy) even for ETVE
376 test. Due to the cyclic switching behavior of compressor, the heat transfer from the spindle also
377 undergo a similar cyclic variation. This variation in heat transfer coefficient h is plotted in Fig. 7
for one typical cycle for both ATS and CTM strategies. It is clearly seen that the maximum value

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378

379 of h is much higher in ATS when compared with CTM strategy because of the relatively higher
’ON’ time. In ATS strategy, as the coolant is cooled by about 3 degrees, the ’ON’ time is about 60

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380

381 seconds and therefore h increases approximately to 600 W/m2 K quickly but falls back afterwards.
However, in CTM, the ’ON’ time is only 20 seconds, therefore maximum value of h is around

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382

383 100 W/m2 K. A negative value of h implies that the coolant is adding heat to the spindle instead
384 of taking away the heat. It is interesting to note that as h becomes negative, Q̇d also is negative

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385 and the CTM control strategy (Section 2) switches ’ON’ the compressor; however ATS strategy
386

387
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waits until Tc,avg > Tamb + 1◦ C to switch ’ON’ the compressor. It is for this reason that the value
of h is negative from around 220 seconds till 410 seconds during ATS strategy as per Fig. 7. It is
also interesting to note that the peak value of h is attained after the compressor is switched ’OFF’
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388

389 because of the inherent delay in the reflection of lower coolant temperatures from the instant at
which compressor is switched ’ON’ for both strategies. Using the updated boundary condition,
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390

391 the Eqn. 16 is solved using Matlab function ’ode45’ for one typical cycle of both ATS and CTM
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392 cooling strategies. The time step chosen is 0.001 s and the initial condition is T (0) = 25◦ C for
393 both cases. The resulting T and ∆z are plotted in Fig. 8 wherein interesting trends are observed:
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394 first, the spindle temperature variation for ATS strategy follows h with a peak variation of about
395 0.14◦ C at about 100 seconds. On similar lines, ∆z variation shows a maximum deviation of about
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396 0.4 µm again at around 100 seconds. On the other hand, the variation of T and ∆z for CTM
397 strategy are relatively negligible. This behaviour explains the high-frequency components of ∆z
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398 as well as thicker lines for bearing temperature evolution plot as observed for ATS strategy when
399 compared with CTM in Fig. 5. In passing, it is noted that the assumption of lumped system to
400 obtain Eqn. 14 is not strictly valid in a practical machining scenario due to presence of various
401 internal heat sources along with cutting heat and one needs to resort to solve Eqn. 8, which is quite
402 complicated in nature. That is, one needs to solve fluid-thermal-structural coupled equations over
403 space and time considering time-varying boundary conditions, which in itself is difficult to estimate

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404 accurately [28, 29]. An approach to solve this kind of problem will be dealt elsewhere.

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Figure 7: The experimentally computed convection heat transfer coefficient h for one compressor ’ON-OFF’ cycle for
ATS (left) and CTM (right) strategies. The time interval over which compressor is ’ON’ is shown through a
gray shaded region.
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Figure 8: The spindle temperature variation obtained after solving Eqn. 16 for ATS is following h trend (Fig. 7) and
the maximum variation is about 0.14◦ C; while the corresponding ∆z variation is about 0.4 µm. However, T
or ∆z variation for CTM strategy is negligible.

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405 5. Results from variable spindle speed experiments

406 The cooling strategies (ATS and CTM) are now put to actual test through two variable speed
407 experiments of 150 minutes duration: the first, a step-wise variation of N, while the second, quite
408 irregular in N (named as ’Profile-I’ and ’Profile-II’ respectively, as per Fig. 9). Temperatures in

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409 conjunction with real-time spindle speed, N and load, P, are recorded every ∆t seconds, while dis-
410 placements are measured initially at higher frequency and later at a constant interval of 10 minutes

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411 (at 60, 60, 60, 120, 300 and every 600 seconds) so that transient variations during the initial phase
412 of experiment are captured well. It is ensured that just before the displacement measurement as

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413 per the specified intermittent cycle, the spindle is made to stop for a brief while and oriented to the
414 specified angular position using standard ’M19’ command so that dynamic running errors or run-
out of the precision disk are not taken into account and thus the measured distortion is significantly

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due to thermal issues only.

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Figure 9: Two variable speed experiments named "Profile-I" and "Profile-II" are performed for both ATS and CTM
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control strategies separately.

416

417 The efficacy of CTM strategy is illustrated using three plots in addition to the temperature
418 evolution plot in Fig. 10 for ’Profile-I’ experiment. First with the real-time variation of modified
419 heat generation rate, Q̇m
g along with the corresponding heat extraction rate, Q̇d ; second, with the

420 balance of heat power, defined as the difference between Q̇m

g and Q̇d ; and with the last sub-plot

421 wherein, a set of two bars are plotted for every 600 seconds of the experiment. While the height

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422 of one bar represents average ’ON’ time, the height of the other corresponds to average switching
423 time period in seconds. This plot aids in one-to-one comparison of switching behavior of the cooler
424 compressor for both strategies. It is to be noted from the sub-plot (b) of Fig. 10 that Q̇m
g becomes

425 null at the end of every 10th minute because of the fact that the spindle is made to stop for a brief
while before displacement readings are collected as noted earlier in this Section. The following

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426

427 interesting trends can be observed from Fig. 10 for both control strategies: the magnitude of Tm
is always greater than that of Tr , which in turn is higher than Tf as the motor temperature sensor

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429 is affixed within the stator coil while the front and rear bearings sensors are fixed close to the
outer race of bearings, which are slightly away from heat source; next, the variation in magnitude

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430

431 of temperatures of Tf and Tr can be attributed to the fact that front bearings are cooled while the
432 rear bearings are not. The evolution of Tm is in a step-wise fashion due to integral least count of

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433 FANUC controller for the particular sensor. Further, Tm , Tf and Tr are positively correlated with
434

435
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N: the higher the N, the higher is the temperatures and vice-versa; also, Tamb increased by about
4◦ C during the course of experiment for both ATS and CTM strategies. It is interesting to note
that the average coolant temperature Tc,avg follows (with perturbations) Tamb irrespective of Q̇m
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436 g

437 for ATS strategy, while Tc,avg reduces when Q̇m

g increases irrespective of change in Tamb for CTM

strategy. Due to this adaptive behaviour of CTM strategy, Q̇d is able to match Q̇m
g in a much better
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439 fashion (refer sub-plot (c) of Fig. 10) and therefore Tf , Tr and Tm are lower when compared with
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440 ATS strategy. This is possible because the compressor ’ON’ time and its switching time period
441 is dependent on the real-time Q̇m
g and Q̇d data (sub-plot (d) of Fig. 10). It is observed that for
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442 CTM strategy, the ’ON’ time varies from 20 to 80 seconds, while the switching time period varies
443 from 40 to 90 seconds; however in ATS, the ’ON’ time remains mostly constant at 60 seconds and
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444 switching time period varies from 290 to around 400 seconds. In ATS strategy, it is observed that
445 Q̇m
g and Q̇d follow each other but not as effectively as in CTM strategy. Moreover, it can be noticed
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446 within the 40 to 50 minutes duration, i.e., when N has been reduced from 10, 000 rpm to 0 rpm,
447 no change in compressor switching trend was observed for ATS; however, in CTM strategy during
448 this period, compressor did not switch ’ON’ till 46th minute owing to higher Q̇d in comparison to
449 Q̇m
g , thus reinforcing its adaptive nature. In addition, it is interesting to note that the magnitudes of

450 Tm , Tf and Tr is around 3 to 4 ◦ C lesser for CTM strategy than that of ATS although Tamb increased
451 by about 4◦ C for both strategies. Corresponding to these temperature variations, the measured

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452 thermal distortion is plotted in Fig. 11. As expected, it is observed that ∆z has a maximum value
453 when N = 10, 000 rpm and ∆z decreases with N although it does not contract back to its original
454 state at the end of the experiment for both strategies. A similar trend is observed for γx and γy
455 respectively except for the fact that peak values have shifted when compared with ∆z evolution;
the reason for which is not clear. Quantitatively, it is highlighted that ∆z, γx and γy are much lesser

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457 during CTM strategy when compared with ATS strategy, which reflects the advantage of CTM over
ATS strategy. The ambient temperature Tamb significantly increased during the course of both ATS

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458

459 and CTM experiments and therefore a question arises on its share of contribution to the resulting
thermal distortion. In order to understand the contribution of internal heat source alone on the

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460

461 thermal distortion, the same experiment is repeated but at different time slots. The time slots are
462 chosen as ’Slot-1’ and ’Slot-2’ duration (Refer Fig. 5) as it was noted in Section 4 that the slope

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463 of Tamb as well as ∆z is close to zero during this duration. It is expected that since the change in
464

465 distortion1 .
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Tamb will be minimum during these time slots, Tamb will not have a significant effect on thermal

As before, Fig. 12 illustrates the evolution of temperatures, heat powers and the compressor
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467 ’ON’ time and switching periods. It is clearly seen that Tamb remains constant throughout the
experiment for both strategies in contrast to Fig. 10 as the experiment is conducted during ’Slot-1’
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469 duration. Further, it is observed that the evolution of field quantities are similar when compared
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470 with Fig. 10. The resulting thermal distortion (Fig. 13) shows a decrease in magnitude when
471 compared with corresponding Fig. 11 throughout the experiment for both strategies due to the
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472 negligible variations of external heat source. It is worth noting that CTM resulted in lower bearing
473 and motor temperatures either when Tamb remained constant or when it increased by about 4◦ C
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474 during the experiment and therefore fared better as far as temperature stabilizations and thermal
475 distortions are concerned. It becomes clear from Figs. 11 and 13 that Tamb has a significant effect
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476 on thermal distortion and one needs to be careful in choosing the time slot for the experiment if it
477 is not conducted in a temperature controlled environment.
478 The procedure is repeated for ’Profile-II’ experiment, which involves irregular variations of N.
479 The experiment is conducted during ’Slot-1’ duration for reasons explained earlier. Observations

1 Ideally, the experiment should be conducted in a temperature controlled environment; however due to its unavail-
ability, this workaround was followed.

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Figure 10: The evolution of (a) temperatures, (b) heating and cooling powers, (c) balance of heat power and finally (d)
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compressor switch ’ON’ times and switching time periods for ATS (left) and CTM (right) strategies for
"Profile-I" experiment.
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Figure 11: The evolution of ∆z, γx and γy for "Profile-I" experiment for ATS (left) and CTM strategies (right). It is
observed that the thermal distortion has significantly reduced in CTM when compared with ATS strategy.

480 similar to ’Profile-I’ experiment are noted, which are illustrated in Figs. 14 and 15. Although
481 adaptive nature of CTM strategy is reinforced, Q̇d is however unable to closely follow Q̇m
g at higher

482 spindle speeds as Q̇m

g increases rapidly for higher N. Here, the ’ON’ time of compressor varies

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Figure 12: The evolution of (a) temperatures, (b) heating and cooling powers, (c) balance of heat power and finally (d)
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compressor switch ’ON’ times and switching time periods for ATS (left) and CTM (right) strategies for
"Profile-I" experiment at ’Slot-1’ duration. Similarities are observed with Fig. 10 except for Tamb .
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Figure 13: The evolution of ∆z, γx and γy for ATS (left) and CTM strategies (right) for "Profile-I" experiment
conducted at ’Slot-1’ duration. The observations of this plot in conjunction with Fig. 11 shows that Tamb
has a significant influence on thermal distortion.

483 from 10 to 100 seconds for CTM strategy depending on the magnitude of Q̇m
g and Q̇d . Further,

484 as seen before, the bearing temperatures stabilize at a lesser temperature in CTM strategy when

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485 compared with ATS. Among them, a significant reduction in Tf stabilization temperature of about
486 3◦ C is observed in CTM strategy. Concurrently, a significant reduction in thermal distortion is
487 observed in CTM when compared with ATS as shown in Tables 4 and 5, which corresponds to mean
488 and absolute thermal error measured for all the experiments. These results in a qualitative sense
illustrate the fact that effective cooling of front bearings are beneficial from a thermal standpoint.

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489

490 Further, experiments are repeated in "Slot-2" duration and similar results are obtained and therefore
are not discussed here for the sake of brevity.

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Figure 14: The evolution of (a) temperatures, (b) heating and cooling powers and (c) compressor switch ’ON’ times
and switching time periods for ATS (left) and CTM (right) strategies for ’Profile-II’ experiment conducted
at ’Slot-1’ duration.
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Table 4: The mean thermal error measured during "Profile-I" and "Profile-II" experiments for both ATS and CTM
control strategies.
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∆z (µm) γx (µ rad) γy (µ rad)

Expt.
ATS CTM ATS CTM ATS CTM
Profile-I 19.8 12.8 28.4 14 18.4 19.1
Profile-I (’Slot-1’) 12.5 6.1 10.3 5.6 16.5 12
Profile-II (’Slot-1’) 17.9 9.4 19.6 9.8 18.9 14.5

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Figure 15: The evolution of ∆z, γx and γy for ATS (left) and CTM strategies (right) for ’Profile-II’ experiment

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conducted at ’Slot-1’ duration. The thermal distortion has significantly reduced in CTM when compared
with ATS strategy.
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Table 5: The absolute maximum thermal error measured during "Profile-I" and "Profile-II" experiments for both ATS
and CTM strategies.
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∆z (µm) γx (µ rad) γy (µ rad)
Expt.
ATS CTM ATS CTM ATS CTM
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Profile-I 33.9 24.3 58 34 70 45

Profile-I (’Slot-1’) 26.6 14.1 33 25 27 53
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Profile-II (’Slot-1’) 43.7 25.1 53 39 49 36

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492 6. Discussion

493 Significant reduction in thermal distortion is observed when CTM control strategy is employed
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494 as the compressor switching behavior is dependent on the heat generation and dissipation rates
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495 as shown in Section 5. It is also observed that the heat dissipation is matching the generation
496 rate in lesser heat regimes. However, at high speeds, they are not able to match very well (Fig.
497 14) as the quantum of cooling is restricted through energy criterion. Thus, it is noted that the
498 objective of CTM model (Eqn. 12) is achieved only during lesser heat regimes because of two-
499 fold reason: first is the limited cooling capacity, while the next is the design restriction of the
500 spindle. The fixed cooling capacity of the cooler unit can allow Q̇d to follow Q̇m
g with lots of

501 overshoots and undershoots. However, it is expected that these perturbations do not significantly

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502 influence thermal distortion thanks to the large thermal inertia and time constant of the spindle.
503 Due to the design restrictions, the coolant channels are placed far away from the heat source (Fig.
504 2) and therefore, forced convection heat transfer can only reduce the effect of heat generation but
505 not eliminate it. If the quantum of cooling is increased further, the coolant and spindle housing
could reach very low temperatures and trigger the entry of moisture into the motor and bearings

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506

507 through condensation and damage them permanently. In addition, such low temperatures of coolant
might lead to a greater temperature gradient within bearings, which in turn, can result in higher

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508

509 preload and eventually reduce life of bearings, albeit depending on the bearing configuration [30].
Therefore, during high-speed operation, oil-air or oil-mist lubrication is preferred as the cooling is

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510

511 done at the source of bearing heat generation. To complement this, through-spindle coolant strategy
512 is also employed wherein high-pressure coolant is passed through the center of spindle shaft and the

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513 cutting tool for improving thermal characteristics and to prolong tool life. It is to be noted that the
514

515
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second issue described above persists even when separate cooling channels for bearing and motor
are deployed [13]; although the issue of perturbations with respect to cooling and heating powers
might be reduced thanks to the fine control capability of real-time cooling rates due to the addition
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516

517 of sophisticated hardware and software at the expense of high investment cost in [13, 14, 15].
The CTM control strategy accounts for fluctuations due to internal heat sources; however, am-
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518

519 bient temperature or its variation does not play a major role in its functionality. This becomes
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520 especially important because thermal expansion of more than 20 µm has been observed (Section 5)
521 when the spindle is idling during a 24-hour cycle. Therefore, machining errors will also be a func-
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522 tion of the ambient temperature change over which machining is performed, if the machine tool is
523 not commissioned in a temperature controlled environment. This issue has been demonstrated in
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524 a quantitative sense in this work by performing the same experiment at two time slots: first when
525 the ambient temperature is changing rapidly and the second when the ambient temperature remains
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526 almost constant. Therefore, it is presumed that during low heat generating machining operation,
527 ambient temperature (and its slope) will play a vital role in the actual thermal distortion due to its
528 proportionately higher contribution. Another factor that CTM model does not take into account
529 is the thermo-mechanical history of the spindle, which might significantly influence its thermo-
530 mechanical behavior. The objective of future work will be to include the above-mentioned effects
531 and develop a compensation technique in conjunction with deployed CTM cooling strategy so that

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532 the effect of TCP displacements are not reflected in machined work-piece irrespective of thermo-
533 mechanical history of spindle (and the machine tool) and achieve high precision in machined prod-
534 ucts even when the machine tool is not commissioned in a temperature-controlled environment.
535 In passing, it is noted that the present work either did not consider the effect of coolant type or
the coolant channel design on the cooling performance; for example, water with suitable additives

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536

537 might be an effective alternative to the currently used coolant, ISO VG-32 oil, due to its relatively
higher specific heat. A recent review on the influence of fluid aspects on machine tool performance

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538

539 can be found in [31].

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540 7. Concluding remarks:

541 A novel model-based cooling strategy has been proposed and validated for variable speed ex-

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542 periments conducted on a stand-alone motorized spindle. Following are the important remarks
543 from the present work: AN
544 • A new low-cost metrology fixture for measuring the thermal distortion of the spindle has
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545 been developed. Using this set-up, the thermal error can be estimated at high speeds thus
546 dispensing the requirement of high precision mandrel along with steel sphere artifacts.
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547 • A workaround has been proposed to identify the time slots over which experiments conducted
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548 will have a reduced effect of ambient temperature on resulting thermal errors. Two slots of
549 around 150 minutes duration each, are identified within 24-hour cycle wherein the slope of
ambient temperature as well as thermal expansion becomes close to zero. This workaround
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550

551 has an advantage of relaxing the requirement of a temperature and humidity controlled envi-
552 ronment for short-term experiments.
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• Cooler Trigger Model (CTM) has been proposed for a traditional bath recirculation cooler
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553

554 unit. This strategy is analogous to a traditional ’ON-OFF’ controller with the exception that
555 field variable is chosen to be cooling power with respect to heating power instead of the
556 conventionally employed variable, temperature. In addition, a few constraints are introduced
557 to the model either to limit cooling or to positively influence the life of the compressor.

558 • Mathematical analysis of ATS and CTM strategies for ETVE test shows that the perturbations
559 present in spindle bearing temperature evolution and thermal expansion for ATS strategy is

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560 because of longer switch ’ON’ time and lower switching frequency when compared with
561 CTM strategy.

562 • The proposed CTM strategy is shown to perform better than the conventionally employed
563 Ambient temperature Tracing Strategy (ATS) with respect to bearing and motor temperature

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564 stabilization for two different experiments wherein the spindle speeds are varying with time.
565 Concurrently, the resulting thermal distortion is significantly reduced in CTM when com-

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566 pared with ATS strategy. For instance, the mean error reduction is as follows: for thermal
567 expansion, 51.2%, and 47.6%; pitch angle, 51.4%, and 50% and finally, yaw angle, 27.2%,

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568 and 23.5% for ’Profile-I’ and ’Profile-II’ experiments respectively conducted at ’Slot-1’ time
569 duration.

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570 • The CTM does not include the effect of ambient temperature and thermo-mechanical history
571

572
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of spindle although they are known to significantly influence the thermo-mechanical state.
The scope of future work is to not only include the above-mentioned effects but also to
develop a compensation model to cater to the residual thermal distortion observed in the
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573

574 spindle (and machine tool). Further, development of a tool to solve coupled fluid-thermal-
structural equations which govern the thermo-mechanical behavior of spindle along with the
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575

576 estimation of fairly accurate time-varying boundary conditions will be taken up in future
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577 work.
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578 References

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1. Acknowledgements

The authors’ would like to acknowledge the top management of Bharat Fritz Werner Ltd.
(BFW) for funding this work. They also acknowledge Mathworks, Inc.® for providing an eval-
uation version of Matlab software. Further, they thank anonymous reviewers for their useful sug-

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gestions and insightful comments. SNG and AM thank Mr. Puneeth M. for his help during experi-
mentation. In addition, they thank Mr. Shashikumar M. and Mr. Ramesh A. of BFW for their help

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in the design of the fixture. Finally, they thank Mr. Bagavath G. of AIMIL Ltd. and interns Ms.
Anjali Torgal and Mr. Suraj Kulkarni for their help in developing a customized software for data

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acquisition.

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Highlights:

• A new low-cost metrology fixture is developed to measure thermal distortion at

high speeds.

PT
• A work-around to reduce the effect of ambient temperature on thermal distortion
is developed. Two time slots of around 150 minutes duration each are identified
during a 24-hour day-night cycle.

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• A novel model-based cooling strategy for a traditional recirculation cooler unit
called Cooler Trigger Model (CTM) is developed.

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• CTM yields significant reduction in thermal distortion when compared with con-
ventionally employed Ambient temperature Tracing Strategy (ATS).

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AN
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D
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C EP
AC