Cutting force analysis on drilling parameters of sugarcane fibre reinforced polymer composite

Machining process in polymer composites is evolving and challenging to the material designers due to the delamination of fibre/matrix and its surface exposure to the environment. The present work gives attention to the drilling parameters associated with micro sugarcane fibre reinforced with polymer composites. Natural fibre reinforced with polymer composite makes less in cost, density and energy required for manufacture. Because of these numerous advantages, sugarcane fibres are selected as reinforcement. The composite material was processed by different volume fractions with short sugarcane fibre reinforced such as 1%, 3% and 5% along with unsaturated polyester & coupling agents, the whole process was carried out through manual hand layup. Drilling process was performed using HSS tool with different speed and feed, each material was optimized with the L9 orthogonal array. The thrust force for each drill for all materials was computed and correlated with neat polyester matrix composite. It is found that increase in fibre volume provides optimum cutting force of about 33.54 N and excellent surface finish.