Assessment of factors influencing surface roughness on the machining of glass fiber-reinforced polymer composites

In recent years, the utilization of glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) composite materials in many different engineering fields has undergone a tremendous increase. Accordingly, the need for accurate machining of composites has increased enormously. In the present work, an attempt has been made to assess the influence of machining parameters on the machining of GFRP composites. Design of experiments (full factorial design) concept has been used for experimentation. The machining experiments were conducted on all geared lathe using coated cermet tool inserts with two level of factors. The factors considered were cutting speed, work piece fiber orientation angle, depth of cut and feed rate. A procedure has been developed to assess and optimize the chosen factors to attain minimum surface roughness by incorporating: (i) response table and response graph; (ii) normal probability plot; (iii) interaction graphs; (iv) analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique.