Performance evaluation of nanofluid MQL with vegetable-based oil and ester oil as base fluids in turning

This paper investigated the effect of nanofluid MQL with vegetable-based oil and ester oil as base fluids on cutting force and temperature in cylindrical turning of AISI 1045 medium carbon steel. Comparative experiments were carried out under different cooling/lubrication conditions, i.e., dry cutting, minimal quantity lubrication (MQL) with LB2000 vegetable-based oil, MQL with PriEco6000 unsaturated polyol ester, graphite-LB2000 nanofluid MQL, and graphite-PriEco6000 nanofluid MQL. For this research, graphite-LB2000 and graphite-PriEco6000 nanofluids were prepared by a two-step method, and their thermophysical properties such as viscosity, surface tension, wettability, and thermal conductivity were measured. The experimental results show that application of graphite oil-based nanofluid MQL reduced the cutting force and temperature significantly. Furthermore, graphite-LB2000 nanofluid MQL showed better performance than graphite-PriEco6000 nanofluid MQL in terms of reduction in cutting force and temperature, especially at a high cutting speed. Therefore, compared with PriEco6000 unsaturated polyol ester, LB2000 vegetable-based oil was optimal base oil for graphite oil-based nanofluid MQL machining.