Performance evaluation of surfactant mixed dielectric and process optimization for electrical discharge machining of titanium alloy Ti6Al4V

Literature from recent years uncovers an increased research interest in the machining of biomaterials. In current work, Ti6Al4V ELI grade 23 alloy, specifically used in biomedical applications, has been machined using electro-discharge machining (EDM). The work explores the influence of eco-friendly and biodegradable surfactant additives employed during the process while evaluating the material removal rate (for efficiency enhancement), tool wear rate (for cost reduction) and surface roughness and overcut (for product quality improvement) to relate the adopted approach with one-step sustainable machining aspects. Full factorial design of experiment has been used for the investigation, while analysis of variance has also been carried out to find the significant and non-significant parameters. An improvement of similar to 41.7%, similar to 75.3%, similar to 55.3%, similar to 47.4% and similar to 80.3% has been reported in MRR, TWR, Ra, Rz and OC, respectively, with the addition of surfactants, thus justifying the adopted approach for one-step sustainable machining. Additionally, surface topography through optical and scanning electron microscopy reveals, reduction in surface cracks and voids with additive mixed EDM. The compositional analysis of the surface using EDS mapping confirms the presence of oxides and carbides for all the surfaces, which is found to be significantly higher for the case of additives mixed EDM. The formation of these bio-ceramic oxides and carbides is considered favorable for developing bioactive surface with improved corrosion resistance and surface hardness.(c) 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).