Study of delamination in drilling carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) using design experiments

In this paper is presented a new comprehensive approach to select cutting parameters for damage-free drilling in carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composite material. The approach is based on a combination of Taguchi's techniques and on the analysis of variance (ANOVA). A plan of experiments, based on the techniques of Taguchi, was performed drilling with cutting parameters prefixed in an autoclave carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminate. The ANOVA is employed to investigate the cutting characteristics of CFRP's using high speed steel (HSS) and Cemented Carbide (K10) drills. The objective was to establish a correlation between cutting velocity and feed rate with the delamination in a CFRP laminate. The correlation was obtained by multiple linear regression. Finally, confirmation tests were performed to make a comparison between the results foreseen from the mentioned correlation. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.