Influence of Hard Surface Coatings of Cutting Tools and Process Parameters on Performance Measures in Turning AISI 304 Austenitic Stainless Steel

Abstract

Today s modern manufacturing industries need to develop a highly efficient manufacturing newlinesystem to respond the drastic market changes that demand high production rate at minimum cost of newlineproduction, high quality and low processing time. Especially those industries which deal with difficult-tomachine newlinematerials have been facing severe problems in their efforts to achieve high efficiency newlinemanufacturing system while machining these materials. The austenitic stainless steel belongs to such a newlinecategory of difficult-to-machine material which is widely used to produce critical structural components newlinein chemical industries and nuclear power industry, aerospace components etc., because these materials newlineprovide a unique combination of high mechanical properties and a high degree of corrosion resistance. newlineThough the austenitic stainless steels are widely used, their machining is complex because of their low newlinethermal conductivity, and high mechanical and micro structural sensitivity to strain and stress-rate. newlineAustenitic stainless steels exhibit severe work hardening during machining when compared to low alloy newlinesteels. This results in a poor surface finish, high tool wear, high temperature generation at cutting zone and newlineBUE formation. Many efforts have been made to prevail over the poor machinability of austenitic stainless newlinesteels such as development of new cutting tool materials, hard coatings applications on cutting tools, newlinemachining on CNC machines, introducing new cutting fluids and optimization of process parameters newlinewhich are critical with this material etc. newlineThe literature survey has disclosed that there is an inevitability to investigate the various aspects in newlinethe area of machining of austenitic stainless steels. The present research work considers some of the newlineuninvestigated areas observed in the literature survey. newlineThe austenitic stainless steels are categorized into two grades namely 300 series and 200 series newlinegrades. The AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel grade is extensively used among the 300 series grades and newlinefinds its appli