Assessment of Research Needs for Sustainability of Unconventional Machining Processes

Abstract

The use of unconventional machining (UCM) practices is increasing for product manufacture particularly when machining difficult to cut materials and when high precision is required. There is plenty of research conducted on improving sustainability of traditional machining. However, sustainability studies on unconventional/non-traditional machining practices are few. This review aims to determine the current state of the art in sustainability assessment of unconventional machining practices and identify gaps in research. An extensive review was carried out and analysed using a qualitative data analysing software. The analysis shows that only 25 publications directly and indirectly discuss the matter of sustainability of UCM. Out of this almost 70% of publications were recorded after year 2006 showing a clear evidence of uncovered research gap in the field with a growing interest. Despite this trend, evidence on studies which are explicitly dedicated to analyse the sustainability of UCM are rare.

Sustainable μECM machining process: indicators and assessment

“…However, all of the above research was aimed at traditional machining. Gamage et al(Gamage and DeSilva, 2015) That reveals the wide gap between the sustainability assessment state of art in non-traditional and traditional machining field in spite of the importance of the contribution of the manufacturing sector in the economy, which was estimated as 7000 billion of turnover in 2012 (Gamage and DeSilva, 2015).…”

“…This requires to consider all involved functions and processes in the life of the product; and this is providing the required assessments for the important aspects of sustainability assessment. Therefore, product sustainability assessment is a life-cycle assessment from design to production and (Gamage and DeSilva, 2015) from consumption to the end of the life treatment; hence having a sustainable process is one of the requirements of product sustainability features.…”

Parametric Modelling and Multi-Objective Optimization of Electro Discharge Machining Process Parameters for Sustainable Production

“…Sustainability in manufacturing is concerned with the manufacturing of products having minimum adverse environmental effect, safety of employees, conservation of natural resources and energy and are economically viable for customers. Machining is a major constituent of manufacturing system and sustainability in machining is related to environmental friendliness (cutting fluids), minimum cost and energy consumption, higher production and quality, better waste management and safety of worker [5]. The productivity, cost and quality of electric discharge machined parts are measured through performance measures: material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR) and surface roughness (SR) respectively [6].…”

Enhancing the Productivity of Wire Electrical Discharge Machining Toward Sustainable Production by using Artificial Neural Network Modelling

“…With constant environmental awareness, the increase in product quantity with high quality has attracted lots of researchers. One way to pursue a sustainable production in WEDM is employing non-hydrocarbon oils based dielectric to reduce the effect of environmental issues [4,5]. According to Kellen et al [6], the usage of WEDM process could impact as much 23% to the environment in the case of hydrocarbon oil consumption and the end of life treatment of the dielectric.…”