Heat transfer mechanisms of nano-cutting fluids: a comparative performance analysis model

Nano-cutting fluids technology proved its effectiveness to enhance the quality of the machining processes’ performance, especially for difficult-to-cut materials, as these materials have potential applications in different industries, including automotive, gas turbine, and aerospace. Thus, the development, understanding, and investigation of the nano-cutting-fluid mechanisms are highly essential. The main objective of this work is to study and analyze the nano-cutting fluid heat transfer mechanisms. A proposed heat transfer model has been developed in this work to provide a solid physical understanding of heat dissipation when machining with nanofluids. In addition, a comparative performance analysis between multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) nano-cutting fluids has been presented, discussed, and validated throughout the current study. The proposed model findings offer physical explanations that justify the tool performance results presented in a previous work since MWCNTs nanofluid offered better heat transfer performance (in terms of heat convection coefficient and thermal diffusivity) compared to Al 2 O 3 nano-cutting fluid when cutting nickel-based alloys.