Investigation on the effect of drilling parameters on the tool wear and delamination of glass fibre-reinforced polymer composite using vibration signal analysis

Glass fibre-reinforced polymer composite materials are widely used in industrial, aerospace and automotive sector. It has excellent properties such as high strength to weight ratio, higher fatigue limit, high stiffness to weight ratio, corrosion resistance and design flexibility. The strength of the composite highly depends upon orientation of the fibre material. Drilling is one of the major machining operations that are carried out on Glass fibre-reinforced polymer composite materials to the need for components assembly. There are many problems encountered while drilling glass fibre-reinforced polymer composites. The major problems are excessive tool wear and delamination of the composite during drilling, which reduce the strength of the composite during application. In the present study, the experimental investigations are carried out to analyse the effect of various machining parameters, i.e. cutting speed and feed rate on the tool wear and delamination. The time and frequency domain analysis of vibration signals measured using sound sensor is also used to predict the effect of machining parameters on delamination as well as to develop the tool replacement strategy.