Conventional Machining of Single Crystal Metals and Super Alloys: A Review

Abstract

In recent years, with higher demand on the sustainability aspects of engineering materials, single crystal-based products have gained a good reputation because of many different advantages. Single-crystal materials provide a uniform set of properties with fewer defects, such as the traditional casting process facilitates polycrystalline formation, which has grain boundaries that lead to creep failure. Besides, it has a high hardness and strength, making it very difficult to machine. A few studies only have discussed the conventional machining of single crystals metals and superalloys. This study conducted a comprehensive review on different traditional machining and different single-crystal metals such as aluminum, copper, and nickel-based superalloys. The main feature of this review is to provide a general recommendation for the optimum selection of the process parameters, which will guide to produce a good quality and a high precision dimensional surface during the single-crystal machining operation. In addition, this study discusses the challenges that restrict the machining of single-crystal metals and superalloys. Such a review rarely exists in the literature.