Study on abrasive water jet drilling for graphite filled glass/epoxy laminates

The effect of Abrasive Water Jet (AWJ) machining parameters on quality of the drilled holes in Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composite is reported. In this work a hybrid composite laminates of glass fabric reinforced epoxy with 2%, 4% and 6% graphite were studied. Experiments were designed using Taguchi L9 orthogonal array and conducted using five-axis CNC AWJ machine. The influence of process parameters such as jet operating pressure, feed rate and stand-off distance (SOD) on quality of drilled holes were investigated and results are reported. Further, the process parameter were optimized using statistical method. The study show that jet operating pressure is the most influential operating parameter affecting the response. SEM investigation reveals that use of graphite in GFRP composite helps in improving machinability of the laminates