Study on the Effects of Drill Parameters on the Quality of Drilled Hole in GFRP Composites

Abstract— The main objective of the research work was to investigate the effect of major drill parameters on the main factors such as delamination factor, thrust force and torque on the quality of drilled hole in GFRP composites. Master plan was generated using Design of Experiments and the graph was plotted to view the response obtained after conducting experimental trails based on the statistical model built by taguchi technique. It was clearly revealed by the graphs that, parameters such as drill diameter and feed rate majorly affect the drilling responses.

Keywords— Glass Fibre Re-inforced Plastics (GFRP), Delamination Factor, Taguchi Technique, Design of Experiments (DOE)

INTRODUCTION

Even in the major applicational fields and in the day to day life the use of composite materials has become a very realistic approach to replace many conventional materials almost in all the important fields [1]. The composite materials known to everyone have enhanced properties in all aspects compared to any other conventional materials. GFRPs, a class of composites having high strength/weight ratio, high corrosion resistance, durable nature and reliable property, make them highly usable [2]. They are replacing many conventional materials in domestic, aeronautical, marine and many more applications. The quality of a hole plays a major role in any kind of material application as it is very important for the fabrication (joining) process [5]. Major concern in the field of composite materials including GFRP is the machining (drilling), as they develop surface cracks, damage, internal cracks in peripheral zone and many errors regarding dimensions. Many researchers [6-10] have worked on the optimization of machining parameters in the drilling process and have tried to use many numerical, statistical and empirical techniques for the same. The present work mainly concentrates on the study on the effects of process parameters on the quality of hole drilled considering the three major responses (deformation factor, thrust force and torque).
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