Investigation of ultrasonic vibration assisted orthogonal turning under dry and minimum quantity lubrication conditions and performing sustainability analyses

Recently, increasing pressure on industries to innovate and adopt sustainable techniques has sparked investigations into machining strategies that have minimal carbon emissions, minimal energy consumption by machine tools, and low machining costs. The primary aim of this paper is to identify the machining conditions that can fulfill the criteria of clean production and sustainable chip forming for low-alloy steel which is extensively used in the many industrial field. To achieve this goal, experiments were done under both dry and Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) conditions, aided by ultrasonic vibration assisted hybrid machining conditions at various cutting speeds (100 and 140 m/min) and uncut chip thicknesses (0.1, 0.14, and 0.18 mm). The study was conducted in two stages. In the first part, machining experiments were performed afterward, cutting forces, cutting temperature, chip morphology, surface roughness, and texture were examined. The second part of this study evaluates the sustainability of various machining parameters and cutting environments. The analysis of economic feasibility or rather the total machining costs were estimated by evaluating the costs incurred due to investment of machine tools, lubricant/coolant delivery systems and ultrasonic vibration system costs, waste processing and management costs, cutting tool and labor costs, cost of cutting fluid and energy consumed. On the other hand, environmental viability was evaluated by estimating the carbon emissions (CE) due to the power consumed, material utilization (i.e., the cutting tool and cutting fluid), and the waste processing and management (i.e., disposal of cutting tool, cutting fluid and chip recycling). Results indicate that both dry and MQL ultrasonic-assisted machining processes resulted in improved chip breakability, and produced short-comma chips. Additionally, it reduced cutting force by 28% and the cutting temperature was lowered by 30 %. Besides, Minimum Quantity Lubrication + Ultrasonic Vibration Assisted Machining (MQL + UVAM) hybrid method prevented surface defects and reduced average surface roughness by 24%–35% compared to dry conditions. While utilizing the MQL + UVAM method, the overall machining cost decreased in the range of about 20–30 % as compared to dry and dry + UVAM conditions. From an environmental standpoint, the MQL + UVAM hybrid machining process was found to be a significant contribution to the overall CE due to use of cutting fluids and increased machine tool utilization. This paper contributed to the understanding of sustainability and cleaner production to mitigate CO2 emissions by using the MQL + UVAM hybrid method.