Drilling parameter analysis of hybrid composites (Al/B4C/graphite) using grey relational and Taguchi techniques

Application of composite materials has been increasing worldwide especially in production industries. In drilling operation, standard of hole is the basic demand in numerous applications. The choice of optimized drilling parameters is extremely vital for good hole quality. Our objective is to optimize the parameters involved in drilling of aluminium /boron carbide/ graphite hybrid composite materials to get good quality holes. A series of drilling experiments are conducted in CNC machining centre on the hybrid composite specimen slabs of size 100 mm × 100 mm × 10 mm, made-up by stir casting technique. Our work is to analyse the consequences of drilling parameters like spindle speed, feed and drill tool diameter on thrust force, torque, surface roughness and roundness error. The experimental results are collected individually on L27 orthogonal array and analysed by Signal – Noise (S/N) quantitative relation and grey rational analysis with an objective to optimize the drilling parameters to reveal the dominant factors that have an effect on the responses mentioned.