Machining Studies on Various Ply Orientations of Glass Fiber Composite

Abstract

The glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRC) plate of 7 mm thickness, comprising of 11 layers that are stacked at different FPOs likely 0°, 45° and 90° (fiber mats are placed normal to each other) is fabricated using drum winding and hand layup process followed by compression molding at 150 °C for 3–4 h. Fabricated glass fiber reinforced composites are machined by abrasive water jet machine (AWJM) with variable parameters such as jet pressure (JP), stand-off distance (SOD), and traverse speed (TS). Material removal rate (MRR), kerfs angle (KA), and surface profile parameter (Ra) are taken as dependent parameters. Garnet of 80 mesh size is used as erodent material. ANOVA obtained through Grey relation analysis (GRA) infers that JP has superior effect on 90° FPO, followed by SOD on 0° and 45° FPO. The influence of TS is found to have less impact with respect to FPO. JP is found to have high influence at 0° FPO for MRR and 0° 45° for Ra. There is no considerable effect of JP on KA for 45° FPO. SOD has least significance on Ra, but machining at low levels of SOD, irrespective of FPO, observations are noticed for MRR and KA. The effect of TS is high for 90° FPO.