What is it about?

Modern aircraft and high-performance structures often use combinations of carbon-fiber composites and titanium because they are light, strong, and durable. However, drilling holes to assemble these stacked materials is difficult because carbon fiber and titanium behave very differently during machining. Conventional coolants can damage composite materials and are not environmentally friendly. In this paper, we study an alternative and more sustainable drilling method that uses a combination of liquid carbon dioxide and a very small amount of lubricant delivered directly through the cutting tool. We investigate how different flow rates affect drilling forces, temperature, and hole quality in carbon fiber, titanium, and their combined stacks. The goal is to find conditions that improve hole quality while reducing heat and material damage.

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Why is it important?

Light-weight composite and titanium parts are essential for modern aerospace and advanced engineering applications, but their manufacturing remains challenging and costly. Our work shows that it is possible to improve hole quality while using a cleaner and more sustainable cooling and lubrication method. This can reduce material damage, improve production reliability, and support more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes for high-performance structures.

Perspectives

Working on this study was especially rewarding because it allowed us to combine manufacturing performance with sustainability concerns, which are becoming increasingly important in engineering research. I believe this work can help encourage wider adoption of cleaner machining technologies in industry. I also see many opportunities to extend this approach to other machining processes and material combinations in future projects.

Dr. Iñigo Rodriguez
Mondragon Unibertsitatea

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This page is a summary of: Hole quality improvement in CFRP/Ti6Al4V stacks using optimised flow rates for LCO2 and MQL sustainable cooling/lubrication, Composite Structures, February 2024, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.compstruct.2023.117687.
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