OPTIMIZATION OF DRILLING PARAMETERS IN COMPOSITE SANDWICH STRUCTURES (PVC CORE)

The objective of this work is to investigate the influence of cutting speed, feed rate, and tool diameter on the uncut fiber and delamination damage of three types of composite sandwich structures including PVC foam and faces made of Glass/polyester. A design of experiments (full factorial) was used to assess the importance of the drilling parameters, and digital photography technique was used to evaluate the damages from drilling. The drilling operation was assessed based on two introduced factors including the delamination factor (DF) and uncut fiber factor (UCFF). Analysis of the experimental results for DF indicated that feed rate and drill diameter were the most significant and insignificant parameters, respectively. But experimental results for UCFF showed that feed rate has greatest influence. Also, the results revealed that the both factors increase with the increase of feed rate and there is an optimum point for cutting speed and tool diameter in evaluation of UCFF. Whereas increasing tool diameter leads to decrease of DF and generally in variation of cutting speed for UCFF, there is a maximum point.

Keywords:

cutting speed , drilling , feed rate , Panel sandwich , Delamination