Analysis and optimization of process energy consumption and environmental impact in electrical discharge machining of titanium superalloys

Process energy consumption and environmental impact have been considered as important performance indicators for the sustainable electrical discharge machining (EDM) process. This paper presents a sustainable manufacturing technique known as magnetic field-assisted EDM (MF-EDM) to enhance the machine characteristics for the purpose of reducing the energy consumption and environmental hazards of the conventional EDM machining Ti6Al4V. Firstly, the principles of energy consumption, machining noise impact, and MF-EDM are respectively described. Thereafter, a set of experiments is carried out to investigate the effects of the main process parameters on the electrode wear rate (EWR), energy consumption (SEC), and environmental impacts (including carbon emission and machining noise) extensively, using the Taguchi method. The results indicate that the pulse on time (ranging from 100 to 200 Its) and magnetic field intensity (ranging from 0.05 to 0.10 T) are the two most significant factors affecting the MF-EDM sustainable manufacturing performance. Furthermore, the optimal process parameters were obtained by optimizing the MF-EDM process economically and environmentally using the modified non-dominated neighbor immune algorithm (M-NNIA) method. Compared to the minimum outputs of the experimental results, the optimal solutions of the EWR, SEC, and machining noise were significantly decreased, by 1830%, 61.43%, and 20.95%, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded from the above research that the proposed hybrid MF-EDM technique offers significant advantages and potential for applications in the sustainable manufacturing field. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.