Experimental Evaluation of Surface Alterations Induced in Machining of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy

Surface integrity of workpieces after machining processes is one of the most essential requirements of engineers in advanced industries, since it has significant effect on performance and service life of the components. Based on this, thermal and mechanical loads generated by machining are responsible for change in mechanical properties of the machined workpiece and consequently, they should be controlled. Among them, Ti-6Al-4V is utilized extensively by engineers because of its excellent properties. Therefore, at the present study, extensive experiments were conducted to characterize the performance of machining operation regarding the surface integrity of Ti-6Al-4V super alloy. Hence, the effect of experimental conditions on microhardness profile, surface roughness, grain size, and maximum machining temperature was studied. The results indicated that, cutting speed is a predominant parameter for enhancement of surface microhardness and increase in feed rate has the striking influence on thermal loads enhancement. The results also demonstrated that, increasing depth of cut has the lower influence on grain size variation.