Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279

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Composite Structures
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Review

A review of mechanical drilling for composite laminates

DeFu Liu a,, YongJun Tang b,c, W.L. Cong c
a

College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410083, China College of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510006, China c Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Composite laminates (CFRP, GFRP, and ber metal composite laminates) are attractive for many applications (such as aerospace and aircraft structural components) due to their superior properties. Usually, mechanical drilling operation is an important nal machining process for components made of composite laminates. However, composite laminates are regarded as hard-to-machine materials, which results in low drilling efciency and undesirable drilling-induced delamination. Therefore, it is desirable to improve the cost-effectiveness of currently-available drilling processes and to develop more advanced drilling processes for composite laminates. Such improvement and development will benet from a comprehensive literature review on drilling of composite laminates. This review paper summarizes an up-to-date progress in mechanical drilling of composite laminates reported in the literature. It covers drilling operations (including conventional drilling, grinding drilling, vibration-assisted twist drilling, and high speed drilling), drill bit geometry and materials, drilling-induced delamination and its suppressing approaches, thrust force, and tool wear. It is intended to help readers to obtain a comprehensive view on mechanical drilling of composite laminates. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Available online 27 November 2011 Keywords: Drilling CFRP GFRP Composite laminate Delamination

Contents 1. 2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Characteristics and applications of composite laminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. CFRP and GFRP composite laminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Fiber metal composite laminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3. Applications in aerospace industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drilling operations and drill bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. Drilling operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1. Conventional drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2. Grinding drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3. Vibration-assisted twist drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.4. High speed drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. Drill bit geometry and materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drilling-induced delamination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1. Assessment of delamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2. Mechanism of delamination induced by drilling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3. Effects of input variables on delamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thrust force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1. Relationships between thrust force and delamination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2. Effects of input variables on thrust force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tool wear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1. Tool wear mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2. Effects of input variables on tool wear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Approaches to reduce delamination in drilling of composite laminates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1266 1266 1266 1267 1267 1268 1268 1268 1268 1268 1268 1268 1270 1270 1270 1271 1272 1272 1272 1273 1273 1274 1275

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Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 731 8887 6248; fax: +86 731 8887 6551.
E-mail address: liudefu@mail.csu.edu.cn (D. Liu). 0263-8223/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compstruct.2011.11.024

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8. 9.

7.1. Use of support plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. Use of special drill bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3. Use of pre-drilled pilot holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Characteristics during drilling FML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1276 1277 1277 1277 1277 1278

1. Introduction During the past decades, increasing demand in a variety of industries (such as aircraft, spacecraft, automobile, marine, chemical processing equipment, and sporting goods) for high-performance, lightweight structures have stimulated a strong expanding development of ber reinforced polymer composite laminates. Fiber reinforced composite laminates commonly used in industries mainly include CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) composite laminates [1], GFRP (Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer) composite laminates [2], and ber metal composite laminates (FMLs) [3]. Owing to their considerable advantages, they are being used to replace conventional metallic materials in a wide range of industries including aerospace, aircraft, and defense, which require structural materials with superior properties such as high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios [1]. As structural materials, joining composite laminates to other metal materials structures could not be avoided [4], and bolt joining efciency and quality depend critically on the quality of machined holes. Various drilling processes are extensively used for producing riveted and bolted joints during assembly operation of composite laminates with other components. For rivets and bolted joints, damaged-free and precise holes must be drilled in the components to ensure high joint strength and precision. However, some special characteristics of composite laminates such as non-homogeneous, anisotropic, and highly abrasive and hard reinforced bers, result in them difcult to machine [5,6]. Several undesirable damages (such as delamination, and ber pull-out) induced by drilling drastically reduce strength against fatigue, thus degrading the long-term performance of composite laminates [7].

(a)

Among the problems caused by drilling, delamination is considered the major damage. It was reported that, in aircraft industry, the rejection of parts consist of composite laminates due to drilling-induced delamination damages during nal assembly was as high as 60% [8,9]. Therefore, any drilling-induced delamination that results in the components rejected represents an expensive loss since drilling is often a nal machining operation during assembly of components made of composite laminates. To increase drilling efciency of composite laminates with the least waste and damages, it is essential to understand the drilling behavior by conducting a large number of drilling experiments and by establishing of drilling models of composite laminates. There exist a couple of review articles related to machining of composite laminates [5,10], however, a comprehensive and systematic review paper based on mechanical drilling is not available. Teti [5] provided a comprehensive review on machining of composite materials such as metal matrix composites as well as ber reinforced composite laminates. He covered turning, drilling, and milling processes of both composites. His focus was not on drilling of composite laminates and he reviewed the literature up to 2001. Hocheng and Tsao [10] mainly summarized the critical thrust force models of various drill bits for delamination-free drilling of composite laminates developed by themselves, as well as several non-traditional machining processes for composite laminates. Moreover, there have been new developments on drilling of composite laminates since the review papers were published. The present work is the rst paper providing a comprehensive review on mechanical drilling of composite laminates. Following this introduction section, Section 2 describes some characteristics and applications of composite laminates. Several essential aspects on mechanical drilling of composite laminates are described from Sections 38, including drilling operations, drill bit geometry and materials, drilling-induced delamination, thrust force, tool wear, approaches to reduce delamination, and some marked characteristics during drilling FMLs. Some concluding remarks are contained in Section 9. 2. Characteristics and applications of composite laminates 2.1. CFRP and GFRP composite laminates CFRP and GFRP composite laminates are by far the most commonly ber reinforced composite materials used in many

(b)

Fig. 1. (a) Unidirectional ber orientation ply, (b) Bidirectional ber orientations ply (woven-ply) (after [11]).

Fig. 2. A typical quasi-isotropic laying-up sequence of a unidirectional-plies FRP composite laminate (after [11,12]).

D. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279 Table 1 Composite laminates for drilling studies appeared in literature. Material CFRP Ply/Sheet UD-ply Refs.

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Woven-ply GFRP UD-ply Woven-ply FML CFRP/Ti CFRP/Al Al/CFRP/Ti

Park et al. [13]; Bhatnagar et al. [14]; Lin et al. [15]; Chen [16]; Piquet et al. [17]; Murphy et al. [18]; Zhang et al. [19]; Wang et al. [20]; Zitoune et al. [21]; Sardinas et al. [22]; Durao et al. [2325]; Rao et al. [26]; Zitoune et al. [27];Lee et al. [12]; Rawat et al. [28,29]; Shyha et al. [30]; Jahromi et al. [31]; Iliescu et al. [32]; Kalla et al. [33]; Rahme et al. [34] Davim et al. [35,36,37,38]; Tsao et al. [3945]; Hocheng et al. [46]; Gaitonde et al. [47]; Karnik et al. [48]; Faraz et al. [49]; Shyha et al. [50,30]; Liu et al. [51]; Lazar et al. [52] Mathew et al. [53]; Ramkumar et al. [54,55]; Capello [56]; El-Sonbaty et al. [57]; Singh et al. [58,59]; Rao et al. [60]; Mkaddem et al. [61]; Lasri et al. [62]; Kilickap [63] Khashaba et al. [6466]; Velayudham et al. [67,68]; Arul et al. [6971]; Abrao et al. [72]; Rubio et al. [73]; Isik et al. [74] Ramulu et al. [75]; Kim et al. [76]; Denkena et al. [77]; Park et al. [78] Brinksmeier et al. [79]; Kim et al. [80]; Carrilero et al. [81]; Zitoune et al. [82] Brinksmeier et al. [79,83]; Shyha et al. [84,85]

industries in view of their high mechanical properties. They are formed by the combination of bers (carbon or glass) and polymer matrix. Fibers are lightweight, stiff, and strong, which provide most of stiffness and strength of the composite laminates. The polymer matrix binds the bers together thus transferring load to reinforced bers, and providing protection from environmental attack to bers. Thermoset and thermoplastic are two kind of polymer matrix materials used most commonly [11]. Thermoplastic polymers, however, are available which combine better mechanical properties, environmental resistance, temperature performance and processability. Fibers are often used as continuous reinforcements in unidirectional (UD) or bidirectional (woven) forms by aligning a large number of them in a thin plate, called prepreg ply, which thickness is about 0.15 mm [11]. A unidirectional ber orientation prepreg ply (UD-ply, shown in Fig. 1a) has maximum stiffness and strength along the ber direction and minimum properties in a direction perpendicular to bers, called anisotropic material. However, a bidirectional ber orientations prepreg ply (woven-ply, shown in Fig. 1b) almost has maximum stiffness and strength along every direction. A ber reinforced polymer composite laminate is usually made by bonding many prepreg plies together to obtain excellent properties. Consequently, UD-plies are laid-up at different ber orientations (cross-ply) to manufacture quasi-isotropic composite laminate [11,12]. Fig. 2 shows a typical quasi-isotropic laying-up sequence of a FRP composite laminate made up of a number of identical UD-plies. Some UD-ply and woven-ply FRP composite laminates used for drilling studies are listed in Table 1.
Table 2 Drilling operations typically employed for composite laminates in literature. Drilling operation Conventional drilling (CD) Refs.

2.2. Fiber metal composite laminates Fiber metal composite laminate (FML) is a special type of composite laminate. FMLs consist of high strength metal alloy thin sheets alternately bonded to plies of FRP adhesive [86]. The most commercially available FMLs are GLARE (Glass Reinforced Aluminium Laminate) based on high strength glass bers and CARALL (Carbon Reinforced Aluminium Laminate) based on carbon bers [3,87]. These FLMs take advantages of metal and FRPs, providing superior mechanical properties to the conventional laminate consisting only of FRP ply or monolithic metal (mostly aluminum or titanum) sheet. They offer several advantages such as better damage tolerance to fatigue crack growth and impact damage especially for aircraft structural applications [3]. The major aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, are shifting from traditional aerospace alloys to FMLs for use in their new aircraft design [87]. Some FMLs for drilling studies appeared in literature are also listed in Table 1. 2.3. Applications in aerospace industry In aerospace industry, more and more composite laminates are primarily used in structural components instead of metal alloys allowing for weight reduction. GFRP composite laminates are used in fairings, storage room doors, landing gear doors, and passenger compartments [1,11]. CFRP composite laminates are often used in wing boxes, horizontal stabilizers, vertical stabilizers, and wing panels [1]. FMLs are used in wing structure, and fuselages [3,87].

Remarks 1. Cutting speed < 100 m/min (in generally, spindle rotation speed < 8000 rpm). 2. Besides standard twist drill bits, other special drill bits such as step drill bits, slot drill bits, brad point drill bits, and straight-ute drill bit were also used in drilling of composite laminates.

Stone et al. [9]; Chen [16]; Piquet et al. [17]; Enemuoh et al. [98]; Ramulu et al. [75]; Brinksmeier et al. [79]; Murphy et al. [18]; Davim et al. [35,36,2,99,38]; Tsao et al. [102,103,42,44]; Hocheng et al. [46]; El-Sonbaty et al. [57]; Khashaba [6466]; Capello [56]; Kim et al. [76]; Kim [80]; Jung et al. [104]; Velayudham et al. [67,68]; Zitoune et al. [21,82]; Mohan et al. [105,106]; Fernandes et al. [107,108]; Arul et al. [69]; Sardinas et al. [72]; Singh et al. [59]; Abrao et al. [72]; Lee et al. [12]; Shyha et al. [50,30,84]; Durao et al. [25]; Iliescu et al. [32]; Kilickap [63]; Lazar et al. [52] Jain et al. [109]; Park et al. [13]; Hocheng et al. [110,111]; Tsao et al. [40,41,43] Zhang et al. [112,19]; Ramkumar et al. [54,55]; Wang et al. [20]; Arul et al. [69]

Grinding drilling (GD) Vibration-assisted twist drilling (VATD)

1. Using core drill bit with metal-bond PCD as drill tool 1. The vibration frequencies used by all of them were less than 600 Hz. 2. The vibration amplitudes were less than 20 lm. 3. Longitudinal vibration was applied to twist drill bits along their axis directions. 1. Cutting speed > 200 m/min. 2. All of them used cemented carbide twist drill bit.

High speed drilling (HSD)

Lin and Chen [15]; Gaitonde et al. [47]; Karnik et al. [48]; Rubio et al. [73]; Rawat et al. [28,29]; Iliescu et al. [32]; Liu et al. [51]

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(4) Tool wear and its effects on thrust forces and quality of drilled holes [18,32,42,66,67,79,107,108]. 3.1.2. Grinding drilling In order to improve drilling performance without delamination, grinding drilling operation was rstly introduced into holemaking of composite laminate by Park et al. [13]. A high strength and wear-resistance core drill bit with metal-bond PCD particles (as shown in Fig. 3) is applied to this drilling operation for composite laminates. The mechanism of material removal is grinding and there is no contribution of chisel edge since the core drill bit is hollow, the thrust force goes down compared with conventional drilling using twist drill bits [43,109]. Thrust force is considered as the cause of delamination by several researchers and it is believed that there is a critical thrust force below which no damage occurs, so delamination is generally regarded as resulting from excessive thrust force during drilling [10]. Therefore, smaller delamination holes can be obtained when grinding drilling composite laminates [40,41]. Hocheng and Tsao established a critical thrust force model without delamination for grinding drilling of composite laminates [111]. 3.1.3. Vibration-assisted twist drilling Vibration-assisted twist drilling has received great interest in past few years by both academic and industries. Based on conventional drilling system, a low (<1000 Hz) or high (>1000 Hz) frequency and low amplitude vibration is superimposed on a twist drill bit along the feed direction during drilling. However, VATD is fundamentally different from conventional drilling. The latter is a continuous cutting process, but VATD is a pulsed intermittent cutting process. Conventional drilling produces relatively high thrust force which induces delamination and other damages in composite laminates [47]. On the same drilling conditions, the thrust by VATD are reduced by 2030%, compared with conventional drilling [20,54,55,69]. Therefore, VATD is used to reduce the delamination damage during drilling of composite laminates. Moreover, it was found from experiments that the drilling efciency [19] and tool life [54,55,69] of VATD could be improved with comparison to conventional drilling for composite laminates. 3.1.4. High speed drilling It is well known that high speed drilling has become a widespread technology owing to the fact that the drilling operation leads to higher productivity. Being similar to vibration-assisted twist drilling, high speed drilling is one of promising technologies for reducing delamination. Unlike conventional drilling operation, high speed drilling operation of composite laminates has to be conducted in a high speed drilling machine system which is very expensive. Hence, only a few investigations [15,28,29,47,48,51,73] on high speed drilling of composite laminates have been reported. The main purpose of these investigations was to expect to obtain less delamination due to the reduction of thrust forces. The effects of process variables (such as cutting speed, feed rate, and point angle of twist drill bit) on delamination during high speed drilling of composite laminates were presented [28,47,48,73]. They revealed that the delamination tendency decrease with increase in cutting speed and the combination of low feed rate and point angle is also essential in minimizing delamination during high speed drilling of composite laminates. 3.2. Drill bit geometry and materials There have been many different geometry drill bits made of different tool materials used in drilling of composite laminates, as shown in Table 3. According to drill bit geometry, the drill bits used

Fig. 3. Core drill bit (Hollow grinding drill bit).

Typical examples of extensive application of composite laminates are the Boeing and Airbus airliners [1]. Structural parts (wings, keel beam, J-nose, etc.) are mainly made in composite laminates [88]. About 30% of external surface area of Boeing 767 consists of composite laminates [11]. The amounts of composite laminates used in both Boeing 787 Dream-liner and Airbus A350 increases signicantly and are over 50% of the whole vehicle weight, respectively [30,88,89]. Hence, the aerospace industry generally benets from composite laminates instead of metal materials, especially their superior properties such as high strength-to-weight and stiffnessto weight ratios. 3. Drilling operations and drill bits 3.1. Drilling operations Although several non-traditional machining operations, such as laser machining [9095], water-jet machining [9698], and electrical discharge machining [99], have been developed for application to hole-making of composite laminates, mechanical drilling operations using conventional or special drill bits are primary applications for composite laminates. These drilling operations mainly cover conventional drilling (CD), grinding drilling (GD), vibration-assisted twist drilling (VATD), and high speed drilling (HSD). Table 2 lists the reported drilling operations for composite laminates typically employed in the concerned literature. 3.1.1. Conventional drilling It is seen from Table 2 that, among various drilling operations for composite laminates, conventional drilling with twist drill bits and various special drill bits is the rst operation attracting extensive attention and to be studied systematically. According to the primary purposes of these investigations on conventional drilling of composite laminates, they can be mainly divided into four groups as follows, (1) Comprehensive experiments. A large number experiments were conducted to research the inuence of input variables (such as spindle speed, feed rate, drill bit geometry and materials) on output variables (such as delamination, and thrust force) [12,16,30,38,43,57,59,6365,69,72,75,76,82,84, 101,105,106]. (2) Delamination-free drilling experiments. The primary objective of these studies was to minimize the drilling-induced delamination of composite laminates [9,39,56,80,100, 102104]. (3) Effects of drill bit geometry and materials on thrust forces and quality of drilled holes [2,17,25,35,36,40,41,45,46,50, 52,68,72,74,79,100].

D. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279 Table 3 Drill bit geometry and drill bit materials for drilling of composite laminates used in literature. Drill bit Geometry Twist drill bit Drill bit material High speed steel Refs.

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Uncoated cemented carbide

Step drill bit Brad point drill bit Slot drill bit Straight-ute drill bit Core drill bit

Coated cemented carbide Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) High speed steel Cemented carbide High speed steel Cemented carbide High speed steel Cemented carbide Cemented carbide Polycrystalline diamond (PCD)

Chen [16]; Ramulu et al. [75]; Davim et al. [36]; Zhang et al. [19]; Hocheng et al. [110]; Capello [56]; El-Sonbaty et al. [57]; Khashaba [64]; Kim et al. [76]; Ramkumar et al. [54,55]; Tsao et al. [4042]; Wang et al. [20]; Singh et al. [58,59]; Abrao et al. [72]; Kilickap [63] Park et al. [13];Lin and Chen [15]; Chen [16]; Ramulu et al. [75]; Brinksmeier et al. [79]; Davim et al. [35,2]; Wang et al. [20]; Kim et al. [76]; Velayudham et al. [67,68]; Sardinas et al. [22]; Singh et al. [58]; Zitoune et al. [27]; Gaitonde et al. [47]; Karnik et al. [48]; Abrao et al. [72]; Rubio et al. [73]; Faraz et al. [49]; Rawat et al. [28,29]; Shyha et al. [50,84,85]; Durao et al. [25]; Iliescu et al. [32]; Khashaba et al. [65,66]; Isik et al. [74]; Zitoune et al. [82]; Lazar et al. [52]; Park et al. [78] Mohan et al. [105]; Shyha et al. [50,84,85]; Iliescu et al. [32]; Liu et al. [51] Park et al. [78] Hocheng et al. [110,111]; Tsao et al. [40,41]; Tsao [44] Brinksmeier et al. [79]; Shyha et al. [50,30]; Durao et al. [25] Hocheng et al. [110,111]; Tsao et al. [40,41] Davim et al. [29,2,99]; Abrao et al. [72]; Rubio et al. [73]; Durao et al. [25] Hocheng et al. [110,111]; Tsao et al. [40,41] Abrao et al. [72]; Faraz et al. [49] Piquet et al. [17]; Murphy et al. [18]; Fernandes et al. [107]; Faraz et al. [49]; Lazar et al. [52] Jain et al. [109]; Park et al. [13]; Hocheng et al. [110,111]; Tsao et al. [40,41,43]

(a)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(b) (d)
Fig. 4. (a) Step drill bit (after [44]), (b) brad point drill bit, (c) slot drill bit, and (d) a typical straight-ute drill bit [107].

in concerned literature could be divided into six categories (1) Twist drill bit, (2) Step drill bit, (3) Brad point drill bit, (4) Slot drill bit, (5) Straight-ute drill bit, and (6) Core drill bit. A couple of typical drill bits are shown in Fig. 4. Different materials composed of drill bits, such as high speed steel (HSS), uncoated cemented carbides (ISO grades K10, K20, etc.), coated cemented carbides, and polycrystalline diamond (PCD), have been used to understand the drilling processes of composite laminates. It is seen from Table 3 that twist drill bits made of HSS or carbides are the primary attraction in drilling of composite laminates among various drill bits. However, the applications of other drill bits (such as step drill bits, and straight-ute drill bits) in drilling of composite laminates are

Fig. 5. SEM images of delamination (a) intersection image of GFRP [65]; and (b) surface image of CFRP (after [28]).

also very extensive to improve machinability of composite laminates.

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The importance of drill bit geometry in improvement of quality of drilled holes (such as delamination reduction) is supported by several authors [15,27,40,72,73,110,111]. Drill bit materials also play important role in many aspects of composite laminates drilling, such as extending tool life [16,32], and delamination reduction [72,76]. The advantages and benets of using drill bits with different geometry and materials in drilling of composite laminates will be described in detail in the following sections. 4. Drilling-induced delamination Delamination is an inter-ply failure phenomenon induced by drilling, which is a highly undesirable problem and has been recognized as a major damage encountered when drilling composite laminates. Fig. 5 shows several SEM images of delamination damage. Delamination not only reduces drastically assembly tolerance and bearing strength, but also has the potential for long term performance deterioration under fatigue loads [7,47,109,113]. 4.1. Assessment of delamination There exist several major methods used to assess the level of delamination damage around the drilled holes. The one is onedimensional delamination factor (Fd), as shown in Fig. 5b, which can be dened as the ratio of the maximum diameter (Dmax) of the observed delamination zone (dashed black circle) to the nominal diameter (Dnom) of the drilled hole (solid white circle).

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 7. Effects of input variables on delamination when drilling composite laminates.

Fd

Dmax Dnom

Fa

However, the criterion based on Fd may generally have an inherent incoherence because the extent of the delamination caused by just a few bers peeled up or pushed down to a distinct signicant width does not depict truly the real delamination zone of the drilled hole periphery [49]. Hence, it might be more reasonable using the following two-dimensional delamination factor (Fa) to depict the level of delamination damage [49].

  Adel Anom % Anom

where Adel is the delamination damage area (marked by solid white curve in Fig. 5b); Anom is the nominal area of the drilled hole. Davim proposed an adjusted delamination factor (Fda) based on digital image analysis to evaluate the delamination after drilling composite laminates [38], namely calculated by the following Eq. (3). The rst part of Eq. (3) represents the size of the crack contribution, and the second part represents the damage area contribution.

F da a

Dmax Amax b Dnom Anom

(a)

where Amax is the area related to the maximum diameter of the delamination zone (Dmax); the parameters a and b are used as weights in the parts of Eq. (3). Nevertheless, Fd was used more frequently than Fa and Fda due to more practical use. Several non-destruction examinations were commonly used to observe drilling-induced delamination damage in composite laminates, including optical microscope [2,29,35,36,47,48,63,76,101], stereomicroscope [49], ultrasonic C-scan [40,42,45,46,68,111], digital photography technique [6466], shadow moir laser based imaging technique [114], X-ray computerized tomography (CT) [16,24,25,41]. 4.2. Mechanism of delamination induced by drilling Experimental observations show that drilling-induced delamination occurs both at the entry and at the exit of the drilled holes periphery. Peel-up and Push-out are two distinguishable delamination mechanisms associated with drilling of composite laminates reported in literature [9,25,35,38,42,56,64,80,109111, 113,115, 116]. Peel-up delamination occurs around the drilled holes entry periphery, as shown in Fig. 6a. When the cutting edges of drill bit make contact with the composite laminate, a peeling force through the slope of the drill bit utes results in separating the plies from each other forming a delamination zone around the drilled holes

(b)

Fig. 6. Mechanism of drilling-induced delamination in FRP composite laminates (after [10]). (a) Peel-up delamination, and (b) push-out delamination.

D. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279 Table 4 Empirical models of drilling-induced delamination obtained by using linear regression analysis. No. 1 Ref. Davim et al. [35] Drilling conditions Woven-ply CFRP (T = 3 mm) Vc: 3050 m/min f: 0.050.20 mm/rev a. Standard twist drill bit (Carbide) b. Brad point drill bit (Carbide) Dia = 5 mm Woven-ply CFRP (T = 3 mm) S: 800 1200 rpm f: 0.01 0.03 mm/rev a. Standard twist drill bit (HSS) b. Brad point drill bit (HSS) c. Slot drill bit (HSS) Dia = 6, 8, 10 mm UD-ply CFRP Vc: 3050 m/min f: 0.050.2 mm/rev Standard twist drill bit (Carbide) Dia = 5 mm Woven-ply CFRP (T = 2.5 mm) Vc: 60600 m/min f: 16 m/min Twist drill bit (Carbide) Dia = 5 mm Point angle (h): 85130 Woven-ply GFRP (T = 8.3 mm) Vc: 6.550.5 m/min f: 0.0560.45 mm/rev Standard twist drill bit (Carbide) Dia = 8 mm Tool pre-wear (W): 034 104 g Empirical model of delamination factor a. Fd = 0.966 + 1.085 103Vc + 0.134f

1271

b. Fd = 1.006 + 1.980 104Vc + 0.021f

Tsao et al. [40]

a. Fd = 1.961 10.955f 1.81 104S 1.77 102d b. Fd = 1.539 2.274f 7.81 106S 1.7 102d c. Fd = 1.508 3.385f + 8.681 106S 1.49 102d

Sardinas et al. [22]

F d 1:93f 0:1429 V 0:1022 c

Gaitonde et al. [47]

Fd = 0.810444 0.001889Vc 0.109957f + 0.03454h + 0.000011Vcf 0.000009Vch + 0.00167fh + 0.000003Vc2 + 0.00553f2 0.000115h2

Khashaba et al. [66]

Fd = 1.482 + 1.44 103Vc + 3.143f + 0.0193W

entry periphery. Push-out delamination occurs around the drilled holes exit periphery, as shown in Fig. 6b. When the drill bit approaches the hole exit side, the uncut plies beneath the drill bit becomes more susceptive to deformation due to decrease of its thickness. Eventually, push-out delamination appears at the drilled holes exit periphery if the thrust force applied to the uncut plies exceeds the inter-ply bonding strength. In practice, it has been found that the delamination associated with push-out is more severe than that associated with peel-up [30,6466]. Hence, most of previous studies paid more attention to the push-out delamination. 4.3. Effects of input variables on delamination The effects of input variables (feed rate, cutting speed, and point angle of twist drill bit) on drilling-induced delamination are summarized in Fig. 7. It is noticed from Fig. 7a that almost all researchers cited in this review observed that drilling-induced delamination increased with feed rate at any different cutting speed using various drill bits. They attributed this phenomenon to increase of thrust force during drilling of composite laminates with feed rate. It is seen from Fig. 7b that researchers observed two different relations between drilling-induced delamination and cutting speed at different drilling conditions. Davim et al. [2,35,36], Sardinas et al. [22], and Kilickap [63] noticed that delamination increased with cutting speed during conventional drilling of composite laminates. However, Khashaba [64,65] observed that delamination decreased with cutting speed during conventional drilling of woven-ply GFRP composite laminates; Gaitonde et al. [47] also noticed that drilling-induced delamination decreased with cutting speed during high speed drilling of thin woven-ply CFRP composite laminates. The effect of feed rate on delamination induced by drilling is more than that of cutting speed. Experimental results obtained by most of researchers showed that delamination occurred even at minimum feed. Therefore, the variable feed technique that depends on using

CNC drilling machine is recommended to drilling of composite laminates to prevent the delamination around the drilled holes and to improve drilling efciency at the same time. Gaitonde et al. [47,48], and Kilickap [63] reported the effect of angle point of twist drill bit on delamination when drilling composite laminates respectively, as shown in Fig. 7c. Gaitonde et al. [47,48] observed that the delamination tendency increased with increase of point angle of twist drill bit (Tool material: Cemented carbide k20) during both conventional drilling and high speed drilling of woven-ply CFRP composite laminates. However, Kilickap [63] reported that the delamination tendency decreased with increase of point angle of twist drill bit (Tool material: High speed steel) during conventional drilling of UD-ply GFRP composite laminates. Two advanced drilling methods such as vibration-assisted twist drilling and high speed drilling were used to decrease drilling-induced delamination. Using high speed steel drill bits, Arul et al. [70] conducted a series of vibration-assisted twist drilling and conventional drilling experiments on woven-ply GFRP composite laminates to compare delamination induced by the two drilling operations. From the drilling experiments, it was found that delamination damage induced by vibration-assisted drilling operation was less than that induced by conventional drilling operation due to decrease of thrust force in the vibration-assisted drilling operation of composite laminates. Gaitonde et al. [47,48], Rubio et al. [73], and Rawat and Attia [28] presented the effects of process parameters on delamination during both conventional drilling and high speed drilling of composite laminates, which revealed that high speed drilling was a promising method to decrease drilling-induced delamination compared with conventional drilling. Several empirical models to describe the correlation between drilling-induced delamination factor and input variables (such as spindle speed, feed rate, diameter of drill bit, and point angle of drill bit) obtained by using linear regression analysis are summa-

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rized in Table 4. These studies are not based upon analytical realizations, but they provided a good knowledge about possible outcomes of similar drilling conditions with similar drill bit and work-piece material.

distributed load over the drill bit diameter instead of a concentrated load, described as the following equation:

1 F q F CT CT 1 R2 =2R2 t dl

5. Thrust force 5.1. Relationships between thrust force and delamination The thrust force during drilling is one of key indexes to describe machinability of composite laminates owing to the fact that it directly affects the quality of drilled holes, especially drilling-induced delamination [65]. The size of drilling-induced delamination zone has been shown to be related to the thrust force during drilling composite laminate, and it is believed that there is a critical thrust force below which no delamination appears [10]. The rst analytical model to determine the critical thrust force was developed by Hocheng and Dharan [113]. They employed linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) method to obtain the critical thrust force models for twist drill bit that related to push-out delamination, which can be used as a guide in preventing delamination. In this model, the critical thrust force for the onset of delamination (FCT), which is simplied as a single concentrated load through central point, depends on the properties of composite laminates work-piece (taken as quasiisotropic) and uncut-plies thickness under drill bit, described in Table 5. Hocheng and Tsao also developed a series of comprehensive analytical models of critical thrust force leading to the onset of push-out delamination for various drill bits (such as brad point drill bit, slot drill bit, step drill bit, and core drill bit) and compared with the model of conventional twist drill bit [10,110,111], which are summarized in Table 5. A comparison of critical thrust forces at the onset of delamination between theory predictions and experimental results is shown in Fig. 8f, which reveals that the theoretical models in Table 5 are reasonable. The thrust force in the model developed by Hocheng and Dharan [113] for twist drill bit was considered as concentrated load through center of drill bit. However, the whole thrust force in drilling operation does not come through the center of twist drill bit as a concentrated force, rather it is spread over the chisel edge on the rst phase crack opening in mode I. Hence, the critical thrust force model of Hocheng and Dharan [113] for twist drill bit was modied by Upadhyay and Lyons [116] assuming the thrust force as a uniformly

Moreover, an approximate positive linear correlation between drilling-induced delamination and thrust force for various drill bits was observed when actually thrust force was over than the critical thrust force at the onset of delamination [40,49,65,111]. This result conrms that the key for overcoming delamination when drilling composite laminates lies in reducing the thrust force associated with drilling process through optimizing input variables. 5.2. Effects of input variables on thrust force The thrust force during drilling of composite laminates depend on input variables such as cutting speed or spindle speed, feed rate, drill bit geometry, number of drilled holes (tool wear), and drilling operation. The effects of input variables on peak or average thrust force are summarized in Fig. 9. It is seen from Fig. 9a and b that most of investigators found that the effect of cutting speed on the thrust force in drilling of composite laminates is insignicant and the thrust force decreases slightly with increasing cutting speed, while the effect of feed rate on the thrust force is remarkable and the thrust force increases with increasing feed rate. However, Khashaba et al. [66] found that the effect of cutting speed on thrust force in drilling woven-ply GFRP composite laminates varied with tool wear. Fig. 10 illustrates the effect of drill bit pre-wear on the thrust force at different cutting speed (feed rate f = 0.22 mm/rev). It is observed from this gure that the cutting speed has insignicant effect on thrust force in drilling GFRP composite laminates with fresh drill bits, while thrust force increased noticeably with increasing cutting speed when using pre-wear drill bits. Besides cutting speed and feed rate, drill bit geometry also affects signicantly the thrust force during drilling composite laminates. It is observed from Fig. 9c that the point angle of twist drill bit has a clear effect on the thrust force when drilling composite laminates. The thrust force increased noticeably with increasing point angle of twist drill bit [16,59]. Therefore, in order to decrease the thrust force, the smaller point angle is a good choice for drilling of composite laminates. Durao et al. [25] and Abrao et al. [72]

Table 5 Models of critical thrust force at onset of drilling-induced delamination for various drill bits [10,110,111,113]. No. 1 Drill bit type Twist drill bit Schematics of delamination Fig. 8a Model of critical thrust force h i 3 1=2 8GIC F CT p 31Eh m2 Remarks E Elastic modulus;

Slot drill bit

Fig. 8b

1 F CSL p F CT 2 4 12S S

m Poisson ratio; GIC Critical strain energy release rate (in mode I fracture); h Uncut-plies thickness under drill bit. S = Rt/Rdl
Rt Radius of drill bit; Rdl Radius of delamination. a Ratio between concentrated load (P1) and peripheral circular load (P2). S = Roc/Rdl b = t/Roc t Thickness of core drill bit; Roc Outer radius of core drill bit.

3 4

Brad point drill bit Core drill bit

Fig. 8c Fig. 8d

1a F CBP p F CT 2 4 2 1a 12S S b2b F CC p F CT 4 2 6 11b 1=2S 11b

Step drill bit

Fig. 8e

)1=2 p ( 1 m 21 mn2 2 2 F CT 2 1212 4m 3m2 3m3 n2 81 3mn2 lnn 1 m 1 m21 m1 2m n = Rb/Rt F CST

D. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279

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Fig. 8. Schematics of delamination analysis for various drill bits (after [10,110,111]).

focused on the investigation of the effect of drill bit geometry on the thrust force when drilling GFRP and CFRP composite laminates respectively. Lower thrust force values were obtained when drilling composite laminates using brad point drill bits and step drill bits than that of using standard twist drill bits and slot drill bits. The inuence of the number of drilled holes (drill bit life) on thrust force in drilling of composite laminates is summarized in Fig. 9d. An increase in thrust force with increasing number of drilled holes was observed [18,29,49,66,67,107]. However, the rate of increase in the early stage of drill bit life is higher than that in the later stage of drill bit life. There exists a direct relationship between thrust force and drilling-induced delamination, thus decreasing thrust force during drilling of composite laminates may be one of key methods to minimize drilling-induced delamination [9,49,65]. The phenomenon that the thrust force in low frequency vibration-assisted drilling of composite laminates was less 2030% than that in conventional drilling at same drilling conditions was observed [20,54,55,70,112]. Fig. 11 illustrates the effects of conventional drilling and high speed drilling on thrust force in drilling of CFRP composite laminate at different feed rate using cemented carbide standard twist drill bits [28]. It shows that the thrust force in high speed drilling (cutting speed >80 m/min) is lower than that in conventional drilling, especially at high feed rate (P0.6 mm/rev), and the effect of feed rate on thrust force is not signicant at high speed while thrust force increases noticeably with increasing feed rate at conventional speed. Hence, it is obvious that the benets of high speed and high feed rate could be realized for reduction of thrust force during drilling composite laminates.

A couple of empirical models to describe the correlation between thrust force and input variables (such as spindle speed, feed rate, and parameters of drill bit) obtained by using linear regression analysis are summarized in Table 6. 6. Tool wear As mentioned above, any damage arising in the composite laminates during drilling has a signicant economical impact. Tool wear may result in some serious damages such as delamination of the composite laminates [29,42,66]. In addition, excessive tool wear is also one of main reasons for high cost in drilling of composite laminates. Hence, to achieve the desired quality of drilled holes and to extend tool life, it is necessary to understand tool wear mechanisms and effects of input variables on performances of drill bits. Compared to machining of metals, investigations on tool wear in drilling of composite laminates are few in number. 6.1. Tool wear mechanisms Tool wear during drilling of composite laminates occurs in a number of different ways, depending on different tool/work-piece material combinations and drilling parameters. Different tool materials such as high speed steel (HSS) [72], cemented carbide [29], and diamond coated carbides [32] have been tested to understand tool wear mechanisms for extending tool life. The tool wear mechanisms when drilling composite laminates are characterized by some unique features, the uctuating load acting on the cutting edge leads to completely different wear characteristics of drill bits

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(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 11. Effects of cutting speed and feed rate on thrust force in conventional and high speed drilling of CFRP (after [28]).

Fig. 9. Effects of input variables on thrust force when drilling composite laminates.

Fig. 10. Effect of drill bit pre-wear on thrust force at different cutting speed during drilling GFRP (after [66]).

when used for drilling composite laminates due to anisotropic hard bers, and the thermo-mechanical couple interactions between drill bit and composite laminate due to very poor thermal conductivity compared with general metal materials. Hard and abrasive bers cause the excessive tool wear and frictional heat, whereas a soft and sticky matrix makes the tool edge dull by clogging [16]. Abrasive wear, chipping, and adhesion are attributed to the tool wear mechanisms during drilling of composite laminates. The abrasive wear mechanism is a mechanical wear that is caused by scratching action of hard bers inside the soft polymer

matrix. Fig. 12a [72] and b [32] show abrasive wear of high speed steel twist drill bit used in GFRP conventional drilling and uncoated cemented carbide twist drill bits used in CFRP conventional drilling, respectively. There are many sharp ridges and grooves on the ank faces. It is seen from the two gures that there exists same tool wear mechanism in drilling GFRP and CFRP composite laminates. Fig. 13a also shows abrasive wear on ank face of an uncoated cemented carbide twist drill bit used in CFRP high speed drilling [29]. A lot of research works indentied abrasive wear as dominant tool wear mechanisms in both conventional drilling and high speed drilling of composite laminates due to the highly abrasive nature of the carbon and glass bers [16,29,32,67]. However, Rawat and Attia [29] reported that tool wear was not uniform and could be divided into three distinct regions during high speed drilling of CFRP using cemented carbide drill bit in terms of ank wear magnitude Vb shown in Fig. 13a. In initial (or primary) wear region, tool wear was caused by chipping. It was observed at chisel edge, rake face, secondary cutting edge, and corner of the drill bit [29]. During the start of drilling, chipping appeared due to the cutting edges were sharp and they were unable to sustain high stress. This phenomenon was also observed by Lin and Chen [15] and Shyha et al. [30] when drilling CFRP. In steady (or secondary) wear region, abrasive wear was observed on ank faces. In severe (or tertiary) wear region, carbon adhesion could be found on the ank face due to high drilling temperature, as shown in Fig. 13b [29]. It was proved by EDS analysis shown in Fig. 13c. Intensive adhesion wear of a cemented carbide (ISO grade K10) drill bit in drilling of GFRP was also observed under conventional drilling conditions [67]. In spite of that, adhesion wear was not found to be as dominant as abrasive wear when drilling composite laminates. Although there exist different tool wear mechanisms when drilling composite laminates, the major tool wear mode is ank wear under most of drilling conditions [16,2930,32,49,67,7576]. For instance, Iliescu et al. [32] found that there was almost no rake wear but only ank wear when diamond coated cemented carbide twist drill bits were used in drilling CFRP composite laminates under conventional drilling conditions, as shown in Fig. 14. On ank face, the diamond coating disappeared in small fragments, and the carbide was no longer protected by the diamond coating. Hence, ank wear was used to describe wear level of drill bits. 6.2. Effects of input variables on tool wear Flank wear of drill bits in drilling of composite laminates is sensitive to change in cutting speed (spindle speeds) and feed rate, as shown in Fig. 15. In generally, it can be found from the gure that tool wear increased and tool life declined as cutting speed and feed rate increased. However, an optimum feed rate during low

D. Liu et al. / Composite Structures 94 (2012) 12651279 Table 6 Empirical models of thrust force when drilling composite laminates. No. 1 Reference Fernandes et al. [107,108] Drilling conditions CFRP (T1 = 2, T2 = 2 2, T3 = 5.2 mm) S: 7501500 rpm f: 0.03 0.12 mm/rev Straight-ute drill bit (Carbide). Fig. 4d Diameter (d) = 4.9 mm Woven-ply CFRP (T = 3.6 mm) S: 8001200 rpm f: 0.03750.0625 mm/rev Core drill bit (diamond grits). Fig. 3 Grit size (G): 100#400# Diameter (d) = 10 mm Wall thickness (Wt): 0.81.2 mm UD-ply GFRP (T = 3 mm) S: 3751500 rpm f: 0.0750.3 mm/rev Twist drill bit (High speed steel) Diameter (d) = 6 mm Point angle (h): 90118 Woven-ply CFRP (T = 6 mm) S: 8001200 rpm f: 0.010.03 mm/rev Step drill bit (HSS). Fig. 4a Diameter(d) = 10 mm (Secondary stage) Primary stage length: 7 mm Ratio of stage diameters (n): 0.20.6 Step angle (c): 80120 Point angle (h): 118 Woven-ply GFRP (T = 8.3 mm) Vc: 6.550.5 m/min f: 0.0560.45 mm/rev Standard twist drill bit (Carbide) Diameter (d) = 8 mm Tool pre-wear (W): 034 104 g Empirical model of thrust force FT1 = (0.003S + 1.0467) [76.56(fd)0.39 + 1.047d2] FT2 = (0.0036S + 1.2128) [76.56(fd)0.39 + 1.047d2] FT3 = (0.0035S + 1.5159) [76.56(fd)0.39 + 1.047d2]

1275

Tsao et al. [43]

FT = 23.03 + 54Wt + 0.181G 224f + 9.575 102S

Singh et al. [59]

FT = 1.4365h + 402.8315f 98.0319

Tsao [44]

FT = 115.82 0.912c 224.25n + 1.975cn + 352.778f 1.028 103S

Khashaba et al. [66]

FT = 161 + 3.71VC + 977.781f + 12.793W

(a)

(b)

Tool wear also were dependent on the geometry and materials of drill bits. Kim and Ramulu [75,76] reported that tool wear of high speed steel drill bits occurred more rapidly than that of cemented carbide drill bits when drilling CFRP/Ti FMLs. The coated cemented carbide drill bits performed well than the uncoated cemented carbide drill bits during conventional drilling of CFRP composite laminates [18,50]. Faraz et al. [49] reported that the effects of drill bits with different geometry and materials on tool wear during conventional drilling of CFRP composite laminates, as shown in Fig. 16. The highest ank wear magnitude observed for T2 is majorly due to its K40 material grade, which is relatively more susceptible to the abrasive attack of the carbon bers. The straight-ute drill bit had the lowest ank wear. The good wearresistant of cemented carbide straight-ute drill bit was also observed by Ramkumar et al. [55] during vibration-assisted drilling of GFRP composite laminates.

7. Approaches to reduce delamination in drilling of composite laminates To avoid the drilling-induced delamination, the thrust force applied to work-piece should not exceed the critical thrust force obtained by the theoretical models in Table 5. In generally, critical thrust force is function of properties of work-piece material, parameters of drill bit, and uncut-plies thickness under drill bit, as listed in Table 5. However, the critical thrust force is drilling characteristic dependent under some special conditions, i.e. using support plate under the work-piece [10,56,102]. Hence, most researches on delamination-free drilling of composite laminates focused on increasing the critical thrust force or decreasing thrust force during drilling.

Fig. 12. Abrasive wear of (a) high speed steel drill bit after drilling 180 holes in GFRP composite laminate [72], and (b) uncoated cemented carbide drill bit after drilling 88 holes in CFRP composite laminate [32].

frequency vibration-assisted twist drilling of GFRP composite laminates, which produced minimum tool wear, was observed by Ramkumar et al. [55].

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Fig. 13. SEM images of wear damage observed during drilling CFRP using a cemented carbide (WC) drill bit at spindle speed of 15,000 rpm and feed rate of 0.1 mm/rev: (a) abrasive wear on ank face (close to the primary cutting edge) with an enlarged image; and (b) carbon adhesion on ank face, which was analyzed by EDS (c) [29].

Fig. 15. Effects of drilling parameters on tool wear during drilling of composite laminates.

Fig. 14. Diamond coating exfoliation of coated carbide drill bit after drilling 309 holes in CFRP composite laminate [32]. Fig. 16. Flank wear on drill bits progression. T1 twist drill bit; T2 slot drill bit; T3 slot drill bit; T4 straight-ute drill bit (after [49]).

7.1. Use of support plates Drilling-induced delamination damage can be reduced by a support plate placed under composite laminate to prevent deformations leading to push-out delamination, which is one of commonly ways used in the industry. The results obtained by Capella [56] when drilling with and without support plate placed under composite lami-

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in this aspect. Compared with drilling of CFRP or GFRP laminates, drilling of FML has the following unique characteristics: (1) The diameter deviation of drilled hole between FRP and metal layers is large when drilling FMLs [79,82]. The difference of elastic modulus between FRP and metal causes different elastic deformation, therefore, the diameter in different layer of the drilled hole varies along the entire hole [79]. The diameter deviation of drilled hole can be improved by using an optimized step drill bit during drilling of FMLs [79]. In addition, the effect of build-up edge of Al at cutting edge of drill bit on the diameter of hole drilled also was observed [82]. (2) High wear resistance tool materials are required when drilling FMLs with Ti sheet [75,79,84]. Extreme tool wear on high speed steel drill bits occurs rapidly when drilling CFRP/Ti FML, even after only one hole drilled [75]. To reduce machining cost, hence, PCD drill bits [78] and cemented carbide drill bits with coat (such as diamond [79,84,85], TiB2 [79], and C7 [84,85]) were used to drill FMLs with Ti sheet. (3) The quality of drilled holes in FRP layer may be deteriorated owing to friction and erosion from hot and continuous Al or Ti chips [79,82,85]. To avoid the undesirable inuence, desirable broken metal chips could be obtained through optimizing the drilling parameters [82,85]. (4) It is important to select right drilling parameters when drilling FRP and metal layers of FML since they require a different set of drilling parameters because of their dissimilar machinability [76,82]. To obtain desirable quality of drilled holes, CNC machine tool is suggested when drilling FMLs due to different spindle speeds and feed rates used in FRP and metal layers. 9. Concluding remarks Outstanding mechanical and physical properties like high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios have encouraged use of composite laminates in several applications. Drilling of composite laminates differs signicantly in many aspects from drilling of conventional metal and their alloys. The work presented here is an overview of recent developments of mechanical drilling of composite laminates, mainly including drilling operations, drill bit geometry and materials, drilling-induced delamination and its suppressing approaches, thrust force, and tool wear, etc. There are mainly four mechanical drilling operations for composite laminates: conventional drilling, grinding drilling, vibration-assisted twist drilling, high speed drilling. At present, conventional drilling is used most commonly, but grinding drilling, vibration-assisted twist drilling, and high speed drilling provide better quality of drilled holes as well as high efciency. Drilling of composite laminates imposes special demands on the geometry and the wear resistance of the drill bit. Besides twist drill bit, several special drill bits such as step drill bit, brad point drill bit, slot drill bit, and straight-ute drill bit are developed for drilling of composite laminates to reduce drilling-induced delamination. These special drill bits can be operated a larger feed rate without delamination compared with the twist drill bit. Tool wear mechanisms and development during drilling of composite laminates need to be attentively considered to establish correct drilling selection criteria. The hardness of the glass bers and, more especially, of the carbon bers results in a high level of tool wear in machining operations. Carbide tools, coated carbide tools and PCD tools yield good results in terms of tool wear and tool life during the drilling of composite laminates. Considerable efforts have been focused on the better understanding of the phenomena associated to the mechanism of delamination

Fig. 17. Supported and unsupported drilling of composite laminates (after [56]).

nate using a twist drill bit (see Fig. 17) showed that the former method can drastically reduce drilling-induced delamination. He indicated that the main effect of the support is to prevent inection, not to provide mechanical strengthening. Therefore, a signicant reduction in delamination may be achieved by limiting the workpiece dynamics. Tsao and Hocheng [102] presented the effect of support plate on delamination during drilling composite laminates in the case of using a slot drill bit and a core drill bit. They observed that delamination in drilling with support plate was less likely to occur due to increase of critical thrust force. In spite of this, exactly how that mechanism works does not seem to be fully understood yet. 7.2. Use of special drill bits Since conventional twist drill bit used in drilling of composite laminates without support plate provides a relatively high actual thrust force and low critical thrust force, it is difcult for conventional twist drill bit to obtain delamination-free hole [9,109]. To minimize the drilling-induced delamination of composite laminates, several special drill bits were developed, including straightute drill bit [17,18,107,108], step drill bit [25,30,41,44,110], core drill bit (hollow grinding drill bit) [43,46,109,110], and step-core drill bit [45]. The advantage of the special drill bits compare to twist drill bit is more clearly demonstrated by their higher threshold of drilling feed rates without delamination, rather than by the level of critical thrust forces only [111]. It is believed that the safety margins of drilling window in use of the special drill bits can be wider, and higher drilling efciency is therefore achieved. 7.3. Use of pre-drilled pilot holes With a pre-drilled pilot hole, the drilling-induced delamination can be reduced signicantly in terms of the theoretical analysis and experiments conducted by Tsao and Hocheng using twist drill bit [39] and core drill bit [103], respectively. Based on experiments, they observed that chisel edges of twist drill bit and removal chip for core drill bit are major contribution to the thrust force. Won and Dharan [117] also observed that the thrust force due to chisel edge is 40% from the total thrust force when feed rate is low and 60% when the feed rate is high during drilling of composite laminates. Hence, a pilot hole is pre-drilled to eliminate the thrust force caused by the chisel edge [39] or by removal chip [103]. The diameter of pre-drilled pilot hole is set equal to chisel edge length of twist drill bit or inner diameter of core drill bit. This technique can provide a useful approach of drilling composite laminates at higher feed rate without delamination. In addition, both vibration-assisted drilling and high speed drilling techniques are applied to drilling composite laminates in recent years, which have been described in above Section 3 in detail. 8. Characteristics during drilling FML Drilling of FML (such as CFRP/Al, CFRP/Ti, and Al/CFRP/Ti) is a challenge task because of different machining properties between FRP and metal layers, however just few studies were carried out

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Effect of laminate conguration and feed rate on cutting performance when drilling holes in carbon bre reinforced plastic composites. J Mater Process Technol 2010;210:102334. [31] Jahromi SS, Bahr B. An analytical method for predicting cutting forces in orthogonal machining of unidirectional composites. Compos Sci Technol 2010;70:22907. [32] Iliescu D, Gehin D, Gutierrez ME, Girot F. Modeling and tool wear in drilling of CFRP. Int J Mach Tools Manuf 2010;50:20413. [33] Kalla D, Sheikh-Ahmad J, Twomey J. Prediction of cutting forces in helical end milling ber reinforced polymers. Int J Mach Tools Manuf 2010;50:88291. [34] Rahme P, landon Y, Lachaud F, Piquet R, Lagarrigue P. Analytical models of composite material drilling. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 2011;52:60917. [35] Davim JP, Reis P. Drilling carbon ber reinforced plastics manufactured by autoclave experimental and statistical study. Mater Des 2003;24:31524. [36] Davim JP, Reis Pedro. 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