Sustainability assessment of machining process based on extension theory and entropy weight approach

The development of sustainability assessment for machining process is considered as one of the crucial strategies to realize sustainable design and manufacturing, while existing methods focusing on environmental assessment have limits due to neglect economic and social impacts. This paper proposes an assessment approach for evaluating sustainability performance of machining process with respect to a consistent set of environmental, economic, and social criteria in order to select a machining strategy from sustainable manufacturing viewpoint. Sustainability assessment criteria are identified to compare different machining parameter alternatives; cutting noise, especially, is defined as an important criterion of social impact, and energy, lubricant oil, and cutting fluids consumption are identified as criteria of environmental impact. Additionally, the weights of criteria are determined using entropy weight approach with the advantage of objective evaluation by exploiting the useful information of data to a maximum extent. Furthermore, sustainability performance of machining process is calculated based on extension theory through utilizing correlation function between evaluated matter-element and classical field matter-element. Face milling test conducted on CNC vertical machining center not only illustrates validity of the proposed method for assisting the engineers or designers to define sustainability performance of machining process, but also proves the relationship between cutting parameters and cutting noise.