Damaged Area based Study of the Break-IN and Break-OUT Defects in the Dry Drilling of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP)

Nowadays, Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) is widely used in Aerospace Industry. Because of this, main aerospace companies’ projects include a high percentage of composites. These kinds of materials are usually drilled due to the high number of holes required in the assembly operations of structural elements. During machining process, some of the most relevant defects that can be produced in the dry drilling of CFRP are located in the input and output of the holes, and they are known as Break-IN (B-IN) and Break-OUT (B-OUT).In this paper the results of an applied methodology are presented for the evaluation of these defects based on the damaged area. This area is calculated from image analysis of the holes. For that purpose, dry drilling tests using uncoated WC-Co drills have been conducted.