Experimental Study on Tool Wear and Delamination in Milling CFRPs with TiAlN- and TiN-Coated Tools

Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) have very good mechanical properties, such as extremely high tensile strength/weight ratios, tensile modulus/weight ratios, and high strengths. CFRP composites need to be machined with a suitable cutting tool; otherwise, the machining quality may be reduced, and failures often occur. However, as a result of the high hardness and low thermal conductivity of CFRPs, the cutting tools used in the milling process of these materials complete their lifetime in a short cycle, due to especially abrasive wear and related failure mechanisms. As a result of tool wear, some problems, such as delamination, fiber breakage, uncut fiber and thermal damage, emerge in CFRP composite under working conditions. As one of the main failure mechanisms emerging in the milling of CFRPs, delamination is primarily affected by the cutting tool material and geometry, machining parameters, and the dynamic loads arising during the machining process. Dynamic loads can lead to the breakage and/or wear of cutting tools in the milling of difficult-to-machine CFRPs. The present research was carried out to understand the influence of different machining parameters on tool abrasion, and the work piece damage mechanisms during CFRP milling are experimentally investigated. For this purpose, cutting tests were carried out using a (Physical Vapor Deposition) PVD-coated single layer TiAlN and TiN carbide tool, and the abrasion behavior of the coated tool was investigated under dry machining. To understand the wear process, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) was used. As a result of the experiments, it was determined that the hard and abrasive structure of the carbon fibers caused flank wear on TiAlN- and TiN-coated cutting tools. The best machining parameters in terms of the delamination damage of the CFRP composite were obtained at high cutting speeds and low feed rates. It was found that the higher wear values were observed at the TiAlN-coated tool, at the feed rate of 0.05 mm/tooth.