A novel approach to evaluate the delamination factor of CFRP hole

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) is being used extensively in the aircraft industry. This study is aimed to evaluate the influence of the drill geometry on thrust force, delamination factor as well as cutting temperature when drilling of CFRP. In addition a novel approach has been introduced to determine the delamination factor accurately. A cemented carbide drill with four types of geometries was examined in this experiment, namely, SD-A, SD-B, SA-A and TD-A. It is observed that TD-A tools exhibited the highest thrust force and temperature compared to the other tools. An adjusted delamination factor for those drills were slightly higher than that of the conventional delamination factors.