Feasibility study of delamination in rotary ultrasonic-assisted drilling of glass fiber reinforced plastics

Abstract

Glass fiber reinforced plastics are used in variety of industrial and constructional applications for their superb mechanical and physical properties. Delamination is one of the most important and prevalent damages in machining of glass fiber reinforced plastics. Diamond core drills have the capability of simultaneously drilling and grinding of fiber reinforced plastics, which results in hole quality improvement. Rotary ultrasonic-assisted drilling is the new machining process to drill holes on fiber reinforced plastics and has attracted increasing attention in recent years. In this paper, thrust force and delamination in rotary ultrasonic-assisted drilling of glass fiber reinforced plastics using diamond core drill have been investigated. A proper ultrasonic system for a core drill in ABAQUS was designed and fabricated. Influence of ultrasonic vibration and then tool grain size, fiber-volume fraction and machining parameters including spindle speed and feed rate on thrust force and delamination was investigated. Higher thrust force induces more delamination. As a result of the study, less delamination was achieved in ultrasonic-assisted mode by using a tool with larger grain size onto lower fiber-volume fraction composites. Additionally, experiments showed that lower spindle speed and higher feed rate induce more delamination.