Performance investigations for sustainability assessment of Hastelloy C-276 under different machining environments

Hastelloy is categorized as difficult to cut superalloy widely used in aerospace, nuclear reactor components and chemical industry because of its magnificent strength and higher heat efficiency. Since, the machining of this material is quite difficult and hence suitable cooling systems are required to achieve sustainable manufacturing goals. The present investigation has been focused on the machining performance and sustainability assessment of turning Hastelloy C-276 in dry, flood and minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) environments. Taguchi L-9 array has been utilized to conduct and record the experimental output along with TOPSIS approach to evaluate the sustainability. The output responses viz. cutting forces, surface roughness, cutting temperature, energy consumption and carbon emission have been recorded at various levels of input variables. The experimental results revealed that MQL has minimized the cutting forces, surface roughness and temperature by margin of 20–38%. Likewise, energy expenditure and carbon emission was declined by 9–27% respectively compared to other conditions. Sustainability analysis explored best performance index during equal weightage criteria at 125 m/min, 0.246 and 0.8 mm doc under MQL. However, implementing assigned weightage system evaluated best condition for dry machining as 88 m/min and 0.246 mm/rev having same doc. SEM analysis of insert reported mainly abrasion and adhesion type of tool wear at all parametric range and machining conditions.