Abstract
A cutting fluid can improve machining quality and tool life by maintaining the tool toughness and by providing a lubrication effect to reduce the friction between the chip and tool interface. Although liquid nitrogen as an environmentally safe coolant has been widely recognized in cryogenic machining, its function as a lubricant is plausible due to its chemical inertness, physical volatility and low viscosity. Since a reduced friction is a direct witness of the lubrication effect from a tribological viewpoint, this paper presents an evaluation of the apparent friction coefficient on the tool-chip interface in cryogenic cutting operations to prove and characterize the lubricity of LN2 in cryogenic machining. The mathematical approaches have been formulated to derive the normal and frictional forces on the tool-chip interface for the oblique cutting tests.