An integrated numerical study for using minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) when machining austempered ductile iron (ADI)

Machining difficult-to-cut materials is still an ongoing area of research because of the promising advantages of these materials in different industrial applications. Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI) is among the difficult-to-cut materials as it is usually associated with short tool life and poor surface integrity and quality. Flood coolant is an effective approach to eliminate the high generated heat when machining ADI. However, the use of conventional flood coolant is not a sustainable approach. Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is one of the environmentally friendly cooling approaches, which has been demonstrated to be an effective near dry machining technique. There is a gap in the open literature in the area of numerical modelling of the thermal and heat transfer behavior when machining ADI. Thus, this research focuses on simulating the cutting heat distribution on the cutting tool during machining of ADI by developing an integrated numerical model (finite element & computational fluid dynamics). Two cooling techniques were used in this work namely; dry and MQL. In terms of dry cutting, the simulated temperature values were in good agreement with the experimental results with an error of 5.74%. Regarding the MQL, there was a 10.74% margin of error between the results from the experimental and the integrated numerical model.