Parametric analysis of GFRP composites in CNC milling machine using Taguchi method

Abstract

Milling composite materials is a difficult task due to its heterogeneity and the number of problems, such as surface delamination, fibre pullout associated with the characteristics of the material and the cutting parameters that appear during the machining process. Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastics (GFRP) composite is considered to be an economic alternative to heavy exotic materials. It is widely used in different fields such as aerospace, oil, automotive and aircraft industries due to their light weight, high modulus, specific strength and high fracture toughness. In this work, a plan of experiment based on Taguchi's L27 orthogonal array was established and milling experiments were conducted with prefixed cutting parameters for GFRP composite plates using solid carbide end mills. The machining parameters such as, and fibre orientation angle, helix angle, spindle speed and feed rate are optimized with the objective of minimizing the surface roughness, machining force and delamination factor. The objective was to establish a correlation between cutting parameters and responses. The correlation was obtained by multiple-variable linear regression using Minitab 14 software. Analysis of the influences of the entire individual input machining parameters on the responses has been carried out and significant contribution of parameters is determined by analysis of variance (ANOVA). Keywords -ANOVA, GFRP composites, L27 orthogonal array, milling, Solid carbide end mill.