Analytical and experimental investigation of the parameters in drilling flax/poly(lactic acid) bio-composite laminates

Understanding the influences of drilling parameters on machinability characteristics of NFRCs is of value to both academia and manufacturing industries. The present work investigates drilling-induced delamination and hole quality of fully biodegradable flax/poly(lactic acid) composites in response to cutting speed, feed rate, drill diameter, and drill material. Among various types of drilling-induced damages, exit-ply delamination is found to be the most destructive damage and cutting thrust force is identified as the main reason. The experimental results revealed that thrust force is highly dependent on drilling parameters where feed rate and drill material were found to be the most influential parameter on it. The choice of drill bit in terms of diameter and material has a considerable effect on the machinability. Drilling with HSS drills resulted in nearly 60% lower thrust force and better hole quality compared to that with carbide drills. While the size of delamination damage in the samples drilled at the lowest feed (0.02 mm/rev) sounds to be unrelated to cutting forces, the overall trend confirms that decreasing the value of thrust force leads to lowering delamination damages. Hence, an effective strategy in avoiding such undesirable defects is calculating the critical thrust force below which delamination is negligible. An analytical model is developed based on the theory of virtual work to determine the critical thrust force at delamination onset. Through validating with experimental data, the proposed model agrees better with a more accurate prediction than existing models.