Regular Article

Hole quality assessment in drilling process of basalt/epoxy composite laminate subjected to the magnetic field

¹ Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81310, Malaysia
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mahshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mahshahr, Iran
³ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

^* e-mail: ali.farokhi@polito.it

Received: 9 March 2019
Accepted: 25 June 2019

Abstract

Drilling is one of the most important machining processes which are currently carried out on fiber-reinforced composites. These composites possess a layered structure and different properties through their thickness. When drilling such structures, internal defects like delamination occur, caused by the drilling forces and their uneven distribution among the plies. The current study investigates the effect of magnetic field on drilling process of basalt/epoxy composite laminate in order to reduce delamination and the thrust force and improve some hole quality parameters i.e. roughness and cylindricity. A comparison is made between the responses for both normal drilling and drilling with applying a magnetic field. For this purpose, after finding the best combinations of normal drilling parameters, magnetic field is applied to the different configurations of solenoids on the setup of the drilling process. The results highlighted that using different magnet solenoids on the top and the bottom of drilling zone reduces the delamination and can obtain better roughness and cylindricity with lower damage.