Performance evaluation of white coconut oil based metal working fluid

Abstract

Metal Working Fluids (MWFs) play a significant role in metal machining operations and vastly used in aerospace, automotive and marine industries to produce high tech components. The main purpose of using MWF during cutting operation is to facilitate a layer of lubricant between work tool interfaces to abate friction and heat. In the present context, industries practice to use mineral-based MWFs as of its good functional performance. However, health and environmental legislations have bounded the usage due to its carcinogenic behavior and adverse effects to the environment. Therefore, the requirement of ecological and user-friendly cutting fluid has raised substantially in manufacturing industries. Researchers have taken much effort to find an alternative for mineral oils and concluded the importance of vegetable oils as a substitute to use for the MWF. However, neat vegetable oil express poor cooling capability during machining due to its low oxidation stability. The authors have formulated a white coconut oil-based water soluble MWF to overcome the poor cooling ability by using water and permitted food grade surfactants. The main intention of the research is to assess the industrial applicability of the formulated fluid in term of functional performance while ensuring health and safety of the operators and environmental impact. The surface quality, chip curl radius, chip formation of 0.2% C and AISI 304 steels while using formulated novel white coconut oil based MWF, mineral oil based MWF in flood cooling and dry machining configurations have investigated for the conventional turning operation. The machining parameters were selected according to the recommended specifications of the work materials and tool manufacturers. Coated carbide indexable inserts have been used for the turning operation and surface quality of each set of cutting parameters were measured. Further, tool wear was investigated using scanning electron microscope (SEM). Work tool interface temperature was simulated using the DEFORM platform. The invented novel white coconut oil based MWF expressed better values for almost all the set of machining parameters when compared to the other cooling configurations and proven its industrial applicability for the sustainable machining. The performance of the formulated white coconut oil based MWF can be enhanced by adding nanoparticles and it is worthwhile to conduct the machining operations for hard to cut materials for further confirmation of the industrial applicability.