Reducing the heat-affected zone during the laser beam drilling of basalt-glass hybrid composite

Materials with excellent mechanical properties are the key requirement of modern industries. Researchers have reported that the hybrid basalt-glass composite has excellent mechanical properties and are widely used in aerospace and marine industries. However, the precise machining of this hybrid composite is still a matter of concern. In the present work, laser beam drilling of basalt-glass hybrid composite has been done, to predict a safe machining zone pertaining to high drill quality with minimum heat-affected zone and maximum hole-circularity. The prediction of the zone has been done by mathematical modeling and optimization using response surface methodology and multi-objective genetic algorithm, respectively. The obtained zone has been validated by performing more experiments. From the results, it is evident that the obtained zone is capable of minimizing the heat-affected zone with acceptable hole-circularity.