Influence of minimum quantity lubrication with Al₂O₃ nanoparticles on cutting parameters in drilling process

Machining is one of the largest and most widely used methods of production segments in industries. In this way, cutting fluids play an important role in minimizing production time, cost, and energy in various machining operations. This paper presents an experimental investigation into minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) with Al₂O₃ nanoparticles in drilling process of common rail as work material with DPSCM 435H code to analyze its influence on cutting parameters. Al₂O₃ has been selected for nanoparticles in this study due to its non-toxicity and spherical shapes for enhanced tribological attributes. Experiments were carried out for two different conditions; MQL + nanofluids (250 ml/h) and conventional cutting fluid (15 liters/min). In this work, nanofluid was prepared by adding Al₂O₃ nanoparticles (13 nm size) into the conventional cutting fluid in the specific proportion of 1.2 vol.%. The experiment results reveal that the performance of Al₂O₃ nanofluid in term surface roughness is better compared to the conventional cutting fluid, but the result of cutting temperature and chip morphology does not match with the previous experiment because volume fraction of nanofluid is too high. It means the specific proportion of 1.2 vol.% nanofluid is not best volume fraction for getting best cooling properties. This experiment does not focus on variations of volume fraction but on cooling conditions.