Experimental study on drilling characteristics of the hybrid sisal–jute fibre epoxy composites

Natural fibre composites have received worldwide attention due to their good mechanical properties, lightweight and low density. Due to these advantages, the natural fibre composites have been used in various engineering applications. Drilling is one of the most frequent machining operations performed on hybrid sisal–jute polymer composites, to assemble the numerous structural components by using mechanical joining process. Furthermore, the machining of fibre reinforced composite material has attracted several researchers because of its non-homogeneous and anisotropic structure. The present research work concerns with the experimental studies on the drilling process of hybrid sisal–jute epoxy composite, using three different types of drill geometry (twist drill, step drill and core drill). The significance of the current work aims to reveal the effect of drill geometry configuration and drilling parameters in terms of drilling-induced force and damages (delamination and surface roughness) for the drilling of hybrid natural fibre composites. Drilling forces, drilling-induced damages and hole quality attributes were experimentally investigated for different drill geometries. The delamination and surface roughness type damages are revealed by microscopic analysis with the help of scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results show that twist drill is best suited for the hole- and force-induced damages.