Experimental and Thermo-Mechanical Modeling Optimization of Thermal Friction Drilling for AISI 304 Stainless steel

The main purpose of this research is to investigate experimentally the optimal process parameters of thermal friction drilling process, based on the design of experiment method coupled with fuzzy logic and analysis of variance techniques, considering the resultant axial force and bushing length. A friction drilling machine is designed, and manufactured in Shoman Company - Egypt to perform the experimental work, and the tools are offered by Flowdrill Company - Netherlands. A temperature-dependent dynamic explicit modeling is applied, considering adaptive meshing, element deletion, and mass scaling techniques. The resultant optimal parameter levels combination is: 9.2 mm tool diameter, 30° friction angle, 50% friction contact area ratio, 60 mm/min feed rate, and 3500 rpm rotational speed. A comparison is performed between the experimental and thermo-mechanical modeling results, considering the axial force, and a similar trend is achieved. Also a regression analysis is applied to predict the expected axial force and bushing length and confirmed by confirmation test.