Background:
Minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is one of the most promising machining techniques that can
yield a reduction in consumption of cutting fluid more than 90 % while ensuring the surface quality and tool life. The
significance of the MQL in machining makes it imperative to consolidate and analyse the current direction and status of
research in MQL.
Objective:
This study aims to assess global research publication trends and hot topics in the field of MQL among
machining process. The bibliometric and descriptive analysis are the tools that the investigation aims to use for the data
analysis of related literature collected from Scopus databases.
Methods:
Various performance parameters are extracted, such as document types and languages of publication, annual
scientific production, total documents, total citations, and citations per article. The top 20 of the most relevant and
productive sources, authors, affiliations, countries, word cloud, and word dynamics are assessed. The graphical
visualisation of the bibliometric data is presented in terms of bibliographic coupling, citation, and co-citation network.
Results:
The investigation reveals that the International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture (2611 citations, 31 hindex) is the most productive journal that publishes on MQL. The most productive institution is the University of
Michigan (32 publications), the most cited country is Germany (1879 citations), and the most productive country in MQL
is China (124 publications). The study shows that ‘Cryogenic Machining’, ‘Sustainable Machining’, ‘Sustainability’,
‘Nanofluid’ and ‘Titanium alloy’ are the most recent keywords and indications of the hot topics and future research
directions in the MQL field.
Conclusion:
The analysis finds that MQL is progressing in publications and the emerging with issues that are strongly
associated with the research. This study is expected to help the researchers to find the most current research areas through
the author’s keywords and future research directions in MQL and thereby expand their research interests.
