Prediction of Delamination in End Milling of GFRP Using ANSYS

Abstract

The use of Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics (GFRP) has increased manifold over the last few years. Generally developed for aerospace and other high-end applications, composites are now making inroads into the automotive and general engineering markets. Thus good quality and cost-effective manufacturing of GFRP composites becomes imperative. One of the machining process milling is the most practical operation available for producing an accurate shape and high quality surface. Delamination is recognized as one of the most critical defects that can result from the machining of composites. Delamination due to milling has been a major research for many years and a considerable amount of work has been done to reduce it by statistical means. A lot of experimental work has to be done in order to know the optimal cutting conditions with respect to factors on delamination, which is cumbersome. These necessities a need for developing suitable prediction model in order to reduce the number of experiments being conducted to determine the optimal values for various applications. In this study a suitable prediction model for milling of GFRP has been developed using Ansys 11 Software. In order to understand the effects of process parameters on the delamination milling experiments using K10 end mill on three different types of GFRP with different speed, feed and depth of cut has been performed and analyzed using FEM model. Using FEM model the desired cutting parameters for minimized appearance of delamination in different GFRP has been developed and its value has been compared with the experimental values. It has been found out that the discussed FEA model results are close to be experimental results