Experimental study of drilling glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) manufactured by hand lay-up

Drilling is a frequently practiced machining process in industry due to the need for component assembly in mechanical pieces and structures. Drilling of composite materials is significantly affected by damage tendency of these materials under action of cutting forces (thrust force and torque). So the aim of this paper is the study of the cutting parameters (cutting velocity and feed rate) under specific cutting pressure, thrust force, damage and surface roughness in Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics (GFRP's). A plan of experiments, based on the techniques of Taguchi, was established considering drilling with prefixed cutting parameters in a hand lay-up GFRP material. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to investigate the cutting characteristics of GFRP's using Cemented Carbide (K10) drills with appropriate geometries. The objective was to establish a correlation between cutting velocity and feed rate with the specific cutting pressure, thrust force, damage factor and surface roughness, in a GFRP material. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.