Study on quality of abrasive suspension jet cutting carbon fiber reinforced plastic

Abstract

Abstract Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are widely used in many fields such as aerospace, nuclear reactors, automobiles, ships, and so on, due to their excellent mechanical and thermophysical properties. However, the cutting of CFRP with traditional cutting tools has many problems, such as tool wear, section delamination, large thermal stress zones, and poor surface roughness. As a precision cold cutting technology, abrasive suspension jet (ASJ) can effectively overcome these problems. In this paper, ASJ is used to cut various commonly-used CFRP, and the delamination, surface roughness, average inclination angle, and upper edge collapse of the cutting surfaces are analyzed by ultra-depth-of-field optical microscope. The effects of jet parameters upon the cutting quality of various CFRP are studied. The results demonstrated that an improved machining quality can be obtained for CFRP composites with a resin content of 33%, a carbon fiber content of 175 g/m2, and a ply direction of 0/45/90° or 0/90° by using ASJ with a standoff distance of 1 mm, a jet pressure of 20-30 MPa, and a feed speed of 30 mm/min.