Tool Wear Monitoring Using Microphone Signals and Recurrence Quantification Analysis when Drilling Composites

Abstract

The quality of the hole produced during the drilling of composite materials is one of the controlling factors for the resulting joint strength and integrity of the structural component. Quality of the hole depends on the condition of the cutting tool. Continuous cutting tool condition monitoring method is vital to accomplish the desired hole quality. To address this concern, an online tool condition monitoring technique using a simple audio microphone as a sensor is developed and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) methodology was used as a signal analysis tool to predict the tool condition in terms of flank wear. A series of experimental drilling operation was carried out on uni-directional carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite. It was found that the amplitude of the microphone signal decreases with the increase of the tool flank wear. In addition, from the selected eight RQA output variables, six of them show an increasing trend with the increase of the measured flank wear, whereas, two of them show a decreasing trend with the increase of tool wear. The same trend has been observed in both set of experiments. These results demonstrate that, this novel approach is an effective and economical online tool condition monitoring method.