Machining characteristics based life cycle assessment in eco-benign turning of pure titanium alloy

Abstract

Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is considered as an eco-benign, greener, and socio-economic alternative to dry cutting. Nevertheless, its effectiveness is limited to mild cutting materials owing to less generation of heat during machining. In order to address this challenge regarding hard-to-cut materials, energy requirement, and material flow, Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube assisted Minimum Quantity Cutting Fluids (RHVT-MQCF) has been practiced in the turning of pure titanium and compared its effectiveness with conventional MQL cooling techniques. The turning experiments were performed on pure titanium alloy by varying the cutting speed (250–300 m/min), feed rate (0.05–0.13 mm/rev), and depth of cut (0.3–0.5 mm), respectively. In addition, a statistical modeling technique and desirability function approach was used to analyze and optimize the sustainable indicators for the machining process associated with the cutting force, power consumption, specific cutting energy, chips morphology, material removal rate, and surface quality (i.e. surface roughness). Regarding sustainability performance, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model was applied using Simapro 8.3 software connected to EPS 2000 and ReCiPe Endpoint v1.12 databases. Findings have depicted the high performance of RHVT-MQCF conditions regarding machining characteristics compared to MQL under same conditions. In-depth analysis has shown that RHVT-MQCF is a sustainable and useful alternative to the manufacturing sector.