Studies on energy consumption and other important machining characteristics in sustainable turning of EA1N railway axle steel

Abstract

AbstractThe present research focuses on comprehensively evaluating energy consumption and other vital machining characteristics during the turning process, aiming to optimize efficiency while minimizing environmental impact. The experimental data is collected through a series of machining tests on EA1N railway axle steel under dry, minimum quantity lubrication (MQL), and cryogenic cooling conditions. Under these cutting conditions, the machinability criteria (energy consumption, tool wear, surface quality, chip morphology) of train wheel axle steel were tried to be improved. As a result, cryogenic cooling at constant cutting speed gave 40% and 53% better results in terms of energy consumption than MQL and dry environment, respectively. When the same situation was examined in terms of tool wear and surface quality, 10–18% and 8–14% gave better results, respectively. In other words, it is worthy to mention that the research findings not only benefit the manufacturing industry by optimizing resource utilization but also align with global efforts to promote environmentally conscious practices in the engineering and transportation sectors.