Abstract

Composite structures used in modern engineering applications are often subjected to circular holes in order to join with metal components via riveting, bolting or pinning joints. These design based holes will interrupt the force flux in the direction of the fibers and create high stress concentrations near the notched area. Objective of the project is to understand the quality of the quasi-isotropic composite laminates ([45°, -45°, 0°, 90°]_S) containing circular hole. To achieve this objective, a 3-phase portal milling machine and a 5kW continuous wave (cw) CO₂ laser system were used to produce the circular holes in the composite laminates. The processing parameters for both the processes are varied to understand its influence. The quality of the circular hole produced by these methods are further investigated and compared in order to arrive at the optimum processing parameters for the given quasi-isotropic composite laminates.

The hole qualities were evaluated by means of delamination factor caused by milling; cone angle, matrix evaporation for cw-CO₂ laser system. For further comparisons, the optimal parameter combinations of both methods were selected for a tensile test according to the standard ASTM D5766-2002.

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