Effects of high speed in the drilling of glass fibre reinforced plastic: Evaluation of the delamination factor

High speed machining (HSM) is an outstanding technology capable of improving productivity and lowering production costs in manufacturing companies. Drilling is probably the machining process most widely applied to composite materials; nevertheless, the damage induced by this operation may reduce drastically the component performance. This work employs HSM to realize high performance drilling of glass fibre reinforced plastics (GFRP) with reduced damage. In order to establish the damage level, digital analysis is used. to assess delamination. A comparison between the conventional (F-d) and adjusted (F-da) delamination factor is presented. The experimental results indicate that the use of HSM is suitable for drilling GFRP ensuring low damage levels. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.