An Investigation into the Dependency of Cutting Forces on the Volume Fraction and Fibre Orientation during Machining Composite Materials

This paper presents an empirical force model quantifying the effect of fibre volume fraction and fibre orientation on the cutting forces during orthogonal cutting of unidirectional composites. Glass fibre plates and high speed steel cutting tools are used to perform orthogonal cutting on shaping machine whereas cutting forces are measured using platform force dynamometer. The analysis of forces shows almost linear dependency of cutting forces on the fibre content for both cutting and thrust forces. High dependency of cutting forces is also observed on fibre orientation with high percentage contribution ratio (up to 95.31%). Lowest forces corresponded to 30o and highest to 90o fibre orientation. Multivariate regression technique is used to construct the empirical model.