Investigation of Milling of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic

Abstract

The use of fiber-reinforced plastics has increased significantly in the past decades. Consequently, the demand for finishing and machining of such materials has also escalated. During machining, the fiber-reinforced materials exhibit machining problems dissimilar to the problems of metals. These are fiber pull-out, fiber breakage in the cutting zone, matrix smearing and delamination. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the characteristics of the resultant force (Fe) dur-ing the milling of carbon fiber reinforced plastic as a function of input machining parameters. For the force measurements, CFR with perpendicular (0°-90°) fiber orientation was machined. The experimental design involved the central composite design method. To analyze and evaluate the measurements, we applied the response surface methodology.