Analysis of heat affected zone (HAZ) during micro-drilling of a new hybrid composite

Abstract

In the present work, laser beam drilling of a fabricated basalt–glass hybrid composite has been done. From the experimental results, a safe machining zone pertaining to high drill quality with minimum heat affected zone and maximum hole-circularity has been predicted. The prediction of the zone has been done by mathematical modeling and optimization using artificial neural network merged with multi-objective genetic algorithm. The acquired zone has been confirmed by performing validation experiments. From the results, it is evident that the predicted range is capable of minimizing the heat affected zone with acceptable hole-circularity. Moreover, the variation in hole-circularity and heat affected zone with respect to the input drilling parameters has also been explored.