Drilling of uni-directional glass fiber reinforced plastics: Experimental and finite element study

The use of Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP) has increased manifold over the last few years. Generally developed for aerospace and other high-end applications, composites are now making inroads into the automotive and general engineering market. Thus good quality and cost-effective manufacturing of FRP composites becomes imperative. Drilling of holes is an important machining operation to ascertain the assembly operations in intricate composite parts. The research endeavors in the field of drilling of composite materials have focused on optimization of the operating variables, tool geometry and theoretical modeling of the critical thrust force. The work done in the Finite Element (FE) modeling of the drilling of FRP composite materials is limited. The present initiative is an attempt to investigate statistically the relative significance of the drilling parameters on the thrust force and torque. The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) are then used to make assumptions for developing a Finite Element model for predicting drilling induced damage. The FE results are found in good agreement with the experimental results. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.