Material characteristics and machinability of metal matrix composite materials: A critical review on recent advances and future perspectives

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) are used in a variety of industries, their applications including the major sectors such as automotive, medical, electrical, sports, electronics, and aerospace, due to their lightweight and exceptional mechanical and physical abilities. The key advantages of these materials are higher wear-resistance, stiffness, strength and light-in-weight; hence, these composite materials are classified as difficult-to-cut materials. To achieve long-term production, MMCs machining remains a challenging task for achieving proper dimensional accuracy in turning, milling, grinding, and drilling operations. This state-of-the-art review is focused on summarizing and comprehensibly evaluating existing and ongoing machinability challenges and undertaking likely solutions regarding MMCs in a way that is both clear and succinct. It achieves this by meticulously analyzing sustainability, surface integrity, chip formation, tool wear, and material qualities. This study also looks at how cooling and lubrication affect machining settings, what cutting conditions work best, and how well numerical approaches, like finite element method (FEM) simulation, can anticipate how machinability of MMCs will work. Due to a lack of prior research, the major goal of work is to examine Al2O3, 2 O 3 , silicon-based reinforced and matrix forms composites with Aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and copper. The literature review covers all the bases when it comes to studying how machining is affected by material properties, microstructure, particle size, and fiber reinforcement. It also discusses how numerical techniques and cooling/lubrication have improved the machinability of these composites. A thorough synopsis of the results, possible advantages and disadvantages, and prospects and obstacles for future research are presented in the last part.