Experimental Investigation of EN-31 Steel Surface Grinding Performance with Al<SUB>2</SUB>O<SUB>3</SUB> and CuO Nano Fluids

The grinding process usually consumes high specific energy, so it is evident that development of high temperature at the interface of wheel and work piece which impair the work piece quality by inducing burn, residual, tensile stress and microcracks. This problem can be overcome by providing effective cooling and lubrication. It is reported that the conventional flood cooling is often ineffective due to enormous heat generation and improper heat dissipation but it exist in practice, either in consideration of economics or process requirements. This paper deals with an experimental study on the enhancement of conventional flood cooling by adding nano droplets which about 5 Nm of average particle size for using surface grinding of EN-31 steel. The objective is to produce defect free surface by surface grinding on EN-31 steel. The machining environments like dry machining, machining with cutting fluid of environmentally accepted MAX MIX ST-2020 vegetable oil, machining with Alumina based nano fluids and copper oxide based nano fluids were considered. Taguchi L36 orthogonal array used for Design the experiment. Here the control factors are feeds, in feeds and various cutting fluids when surface grinding EN31 steel were considered to observe the response of surface roughness and cutting zone temperature. The Scanning Electron Microscope analyses were carried out to validate the performances. The nano fluids out performs in case of reduction of cutting zone temperature and enhance surface qualities such as free from thermal defects and reduction of surface roughness under the designed experimental conditions.