A study on the influence of drilling and CO2 laser cutting in carbon/epoxy laminates

Abstract

Abstract Composite structure made of thermoset matrix often requires a circular hole to join with a steel or aluminium. Circular holes are introduced into the carbon/epoxy laminates by means of drilling and continuous wave (cw) CO2 laser. In this study, the quality of circular hole produced by drilling and laser processes was investigated by means of delamination factor and cone angle respectively. This paper also identifies the optimum drilling and laser machining parameters to make a hole in carbon/epoxy laminates. After identifying the optimum parameters, open hole tensile test was performed on the notched specimens. Moreover, finally a comparison with the help of finite element analysis for further understanding the stress concentration around the circular hole is presented.