Tribological evaluation of Al2O3/GO/ZnO tripartite hybrid based nanofluid for grinding Ti-6Al-4V alloy with minimum quantity lubrication

Machining-induced damages encountered during the grinding of titanium alloys are a major setback for processing different components from these materials. Recent studies have shown that nanofluid (NF)-based minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) systems improved the machining lubrication and the titanium alloys' machinability. In this work, the tribological characteristics of a palm oil-based tripartite hybrid NF (ZnO/Al2O3/Graphene Oxide, GO) are studied. The novel usage of the developed lubricants in MQL systems was examined during the grinding of Ti6-Al-4V (TC4) alloy. The NF was produced by mixing three weight percent mixtures (i.e., 0.1, 0.5, and 1 wt.%) of the nanoparticles in palm oil. A comprehensive tribological and physical investigation was conducted on different percentage compositions of the developed NF to determine the optimum mix ratio of the lubricant. The findings indicate that increasing the NF concentration caused an increment in the dynamic viscosity and frictional coefficient of the NFs. The tripartite hybrid NF exhibited superior tribological and physicochemical properties compared with the pure palm and monotype-based NFs. Moreover, the dynamic viscosity of the tripartite-hybrid-based NFs increased by 12%, 5%, and 11.5% for the Al2O3, GO, and ZnO hybrid NFs, respectively. In addition, the machining results indicate that the tripartite hybrid NF lowered the surface roughness, specific grinding, grinding force ratio, tangential, and normal grinding forces by 42%, 40%, 16.5%, 41.5%, and 30%, respectively. Hence, the tripartite hybrid NFs remarkably enhanced the tribology and machining performance of the eco-friendly lubricant.