Drilling carbon fiber reinforced plastics manufactured by autoclave - experimental and statistical study

Drilling laminates composites materials are significantly affected by delamination tendency of these materials under action of cutting forces (thrust force and torque). On the other hand, drilling is an operation frequently used in industry due to the need for component assembly in mechanical pieces and structures. So the aim of this paper is the study of the cutting parameters (cutting velocity and feed rate) on power (Pc), specific cutting pressure and delamination in carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs). A plan of experiments, based on the techniques of Taguchi, was established considering drilling with prefixed cutting parameters in an autoclave CFRP composite laminate. The analysis of variance was preformed to investigate the cutting characteristics of CFRPs using cemented carbide (K10) drills with appropriate geometries. The objective was to establish a correlation between cutting velocity and feed rate with the power (P-c) specific cutting pressure (K-s) and delamination factor (F-d) in a CFRP material. Finally, this correlation was obtained by multiple linear regression. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.