Investigation on temperature field of unidirectional carbon fiber/epoxy composites during drilling process

The phenomenon of heat accumulation and transportation in the composite materials is a very typical and critical issue during drilling process. In this study, a three-dimensional temperature field prediction model is proposed using finite difference method, based on the partly homogenization hypothesis of material, to predict temperature field in the process of drilling unidirectional carbon fiber/epoxy (C/E) composites. According to the drilling feed motion, drilling process is divided into four stages to study the temperature distributing characteristics. The results show that the temperature distribution predicted by numerical study has a good agreement with the experimental results. The temperature increases with increasing the drilling depth, and the burn phenomena is observed due to the heat accumulation, especially at the drill exit. Due to the fiber orientation, an elliptical shape of the temperature field along the direction is found for both numerical and experimental studies of C/E composites drilling process.