Drilling Uni-Directional Fiber-Reinforced Plastics Manufactured by Hand Lay-Up: Influence of Fibers

Drilling composite materials is a very common and important process used in industry to assemble composite structures. However, drilling composite materials present a number of problems such as delamination associated with the characteristics of the material and the used cutting parameters. In order to reduce these problems, we present this study with the objective of evaluating the cutting parameters (cutting velocity and feed rate) and the influence of the fibers under delamination factor (F d). The approach is based on a combination of Taguchi techniques and on the analysis of variance (ANOVA). An experimental plan was performed involving drilling with cutting parameters in Natural Fiber Reinforced Plastic (NFRP) using a cemented carbide drill. The results of NFRP composite delamination factor (F d) were compared with Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic (GFRP) composites. The objective was to establish a correlation between cutting velocity and feed rate with the delamination of different fiber-reinforced laminates.