Studies on some aspects of composite machining

Abstract

In this technological era, globalization has brought new challenges for the manufacturing industries, towards improving quality and productivity simultaneously, by reducing costs and increasing the performance of the machine tools. Process simulation is one of the most important aspects in any manufacturing/production context. With upcoming worldwide applications of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composites; machining has become an important issue which needs to be investigated in detail. Process efficiency is measured in the sense of different objective functions or process output responses weather they are acceptable for a given targeted value or tolerance. Therefore, finding the best optimal parameter combination can lead towards improvement of the overall process efficiency. The performance of the process can be improved by applying optimization to the simulation model with respect to its process parameters. Single objective optimization method often creates conflict, when more than one response variables need to be optimized simultaneously. In order to minimize cost and to maximize production rate simultaneously; multi-objective optimization approach should be explored. In this thesis, multi-objective optimization methods have been reported to study some aspects of machining of composite material i.e. Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composite. The various process parameters used were cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut. Optimal cutting condition has been aimed to be evaluated to satisfy contradicting multi-requirements of product quality as well as productivity. This thesis has intended towards focusing two important aspects (i) when it comes to improve productivity, material removal rate has been considered and for (ii) quality of the machined composite product, various surface roughness characteristics of statistical importance have been investigated.