Abrasive water jet drilling of advanced sustainable bio-fibre-reinforced polymer/hybrid composites : a comprehensive analysis of machining-induced damage responses

This paper aims at investigating the effects of variable traverse speeds on machining-induced damage of fibre-reinforced composites, using the abrasive water jet (AWJ) drilling. Three different types of epoxy-based composites laminates fabricated by vacuum bagging technique containing unidirectional (UD) flax, hybrid carbon-flax and carbon fibre-reinforced composite were used. The drilling parameters used were traverse speeds of 20, 40, 60 and 80 mm/min, constant water jet pressure of 300 MPa and a hole diameter of 10 mm. The results obtained depict that the traverse speed had a significant effect with respect to both surface roughness and delamination drilling-induced damage responses. Evidently, an increase in water jet traverse speed caused an increase in both damage responses of the three samples. Significantly, the CFRP composite sample recorded the lowest surface roughness damage response, followed by C-FFRP, while FFRP exhibited the highest. However, samples of FFRP and hybrid C-FFRP recorded lowest and highest delamination damage responses, respectively. The discrepancy in both damage responses, as further validated with micrographs of colour video microscopy (CVM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray micro-computed tomography (X-ray μCT), is attributed to the different mechanical properties of the reinforced fibres, fibre orientation/ply stacking and hybridisation of the samples.Peer reviewe

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) Composite Materials, Their Characteristic Properties, Industrial Application Areas and Their Machinability

Technology-oriented applications are becoming more important in today’s world and the use of technological processes continues to grow rapidly, day by day. Because of the advantages offered by composite materials, there is a great deal of interest in this material group in various industrial applications. Composite materials continue to develop at a great pace in parallel with the developments in metallic, ceramic and polymeric materials. Therefore, composite materials have found wide usage in engineering materials in recent years. In this material group, carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite materials, from the advanced composite material class, are commonly preferred in strategic applications due to their outstanding features such as high load-carrying capacity and low density. In this study, the production, characteristics and industrial usages of CFRP composite materials, milling and drilling operations carried out on them are presented along with current technology-oriented applications. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020