Experimental study: comparison of conventional and low-frequency vibration-assisted drilling (LF-VAD) of CFRP/aluminium stacks

The increasing substitution of metallic structural components by carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP) in aerospace applications results in a growing need for drilling metal and CFRP in one operation, the so-called stack machining. The different material properties of the stack components in combination with high geometrical tolerance requirements result in large challenges for the drilling tool and the process strategy. Focussing on the process strategy, this paper deals with an extensive comparison of conventional and low-frequency vibration-assisted drilling (LF-VAD) of CFRP/aluminium stacks. The influence of the cutting speed, the feed rate and the amplitude of the superimposed oscillation in LF-VAD on the resulting bore quality is analysed. For the bore quality, three separate aspects are considered, namely, damages at the CFRP entrance, burr formation at the aluminium exit and deviations from the nominal diameter in both materials. Online temperature and force measurements enable interpretation of the influence on the bore quality. Based on experimental data, a clear dependency of the bore quality and the chip transport on both, the process parameters and the drilling strategy are identified. Based on high-speed recordings, the dynamic loading situation due to the superimposed oscillation in LF-VAD is found to be crucial for the formation of peel-up delaminations.