Application of MoS2 based cutting fluids in minimum quantity lubrication during machining of stainless steel AISI 316

Abstract

Last decade witnessed rapid increase in development of advanced materials for high performance applications. While these materials solve a great deal of technological issue, they also pose considerable challenge in machining due to poor machinability characteristics. Many strategies have been devised. However, environmental friendly machining techniques have been given major emphasis and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) technique is one of them. Although molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is widely regarded as solid lubricant material, its potential as an effective medium in MQL particularly in turning operation is yet to be explored. During the current research work, the effect of addition of MoS2 powder, with average size of around 1 µm, in two different base fluids namely conventional water soluble oil and paraffin oil (a mineral oil) has been investigated during turning of AISI 316L grade austenitic stainless steel with the help response surface methodology (RSM)-based design of experiment. The results clearly indicated the beneficial aspects of MoS2 in reducing the cutting temperature by virtue of enhanced heat transfer characteristics of micro-particle of MoS2.The same powder also helped in bringing down cutting force and chip thickness while improving surface finish. It was observed that MoS2-mixed conventional cutting fluid demonstrated superior machining characteristics. Further attempt was also made to determine optimal cutting condition using grey relational analysis (GRA)-based multi objective optimization technique. The study, therefore, clearly established promising potential of MoS2 powder to be mixed with suitable base fluid under MQL environment during machining AISI 316L grade austenitic stainless steel.