Ionic Liquid As Cutting Fluid Additive Using Minimum Quantity Lubricant (MQL) in Titanium-Ceramic Contact

Abstract

Abstract Titanium alloys have a wide range of application in the field of automotive, biomedical and the civil industry due to its excellent material properties such as high thermal resistance, high load bearing capacity and high corrosion resistance. However, the high cost of machining titanium limits its application in aerospace and shipbuilding industry. Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) has emerged as a new lubrication technique to achieve sustainable and profitable machining, but multiple studies show that conventional cutting fluid in MQL is not sufficient to reduce the friction and the associated effects. Recently, ionic liquids have shown a great potential in reducing the friction and wear of materials in contact. This study focuses on using an environment-friendly protic ionic liquid (PIL) tri-[bis (2-hydroxyethylammonium)] citrate (DCi) as an additive to a biodegradable oil (BO) used as lubricant in a ball-on-flat reciprocating tribometer in the titanium-ceramic contact at three different frequencies (3Hz, 4Hz and 5 Hz) under different loads. Results show a maximum 50% reduction in friction coefficient and 23% wear reduction at a frequency of 5 Hz under a normal load of 2 N by using 1 wt% DCi as an additive to BO as compared to using neat BO as the lubricant.