Influence of Drill Point Angle in High Speed Drilling of Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics

Drilling is one of the machining processes most widely applied to composite materials; nevertheless, these materials are prone to delaminate when subjected to stress concentration during machining operations. The damage induced by this operation may reduce the component performance drastically. The present study aims at high speed machining (HSM) to realize high performance drilling of glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) with reduced delamination. The effects of feed rates, spindle speeds and the geometrical characteristics of the drill on the resulting delamination factor values are comparable regardless of the drill point angle used. A statistical model is proposed for use in predicting the delamination in drilling glass fiber reinforced plastic composites. The results proved that HSM is a technology capable of producing lower damage level in drilling of GFRP composites.