Nanoparticles as additives for cutting fluids

Abstract

Cutting fluids play a prominent role in the metal working industries, to enhance the tool life and surface finish of the machined products. The deprived heat transfer and lubricating property of these conventional cutting fluids causes severe problems to meet the demands of the machining process. Earlier efforts by the suspension of micron-sized newlinemetallic particles towards the improvement of the thermo-physical properties of conventional fluids failed due to sedimentation, clogging, and erosion, etc. Nanotechnology arises as an alternate solution to enhance the functional properties of the materials due to its potential features. In recent years, nanosize solid particles have received considerable attention and widely used as additives to improve the thermal and lubricating properties of the cutting fluids. In the current research work, nano-cutting fluids were formulated by dispersing silver, copper and aluminium oxide nanoparticles in newlinethe mineral oil based cutting fluid, in different volume fractions based on the literature review. Experiments were conducted to validate the enhancement in the thermo-physical properties such as density, pH value, thermal conductivity, viscosities and dispersion stability of the developed nano-cutting fluids and also compared with the results of conventional cutting fluid. To assess the tribological characteristics of the synthesized nano-cutting fluids anti-wear and extreme-pressure (EP) tests were performed in Four-ball tester as per ASTM D4172 and ASTM D2783 standards, respectively. newline newline