Characterisation and optimisation of the Nd: YAG laser drilling for basalt-glass-kevlar-29 hybrid composite material using particle swarm technique

Composite materials have wide applications in engineering components due to their superior properties, which are difficult-to-cut materials for conventional techniques. Therefore, the laser drilling process of a hybrid-FRP composite of Basalt-Glass-Kevlar-29 woven fabrics, along with the characterisation and optimisation of the process using the particle swarm technique (PSO), is reported in this manuscript. The hybrid composite was prepared using the hand-layup technique, and the experiments were conducted per the Box-Behnken design. The process control parameters considered were the lamp current, pulse width, stand-off distance, and compressed air pressure. The hole taper and average overcut were the responses used for the characterisation and optimisation. The optimisation process provides the solution as 204 A of lamp current, 3 ms of pulse width, 1 mm of stand-off distance, and 8 kg/cm2 of compressed air pressure. The confirmatory experiments acknowledge that the predicted hole taper and the average overcut using the PSO are within the acceptable errors. A newly developed hybrid composite of Basalt, Glass and Kevlar-29 was manufactured using hand layup technique.Nd: YAG laser drilling operations were completed with consideration of hole taper and average overcut as the responses.The PSO prediction and experimental deviations of hole taper and average overcut were 10.2% and 13.26%, respectively.