DRILLING OF METAL MATRIX COMPOSITE A FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH

Abstract

A demand for a high strength and tough materials has led to the development of a new generation of materials, known as composites (MMC's). The processing of composites can be broadly classified into primary and secondary processing. There are a number of techniques that can be used for primary processing. The secondary processing of MMC's has not been investigated in detail. This research investigates the finite element model for drilling of Al/SiC metal matrix composites (MMC) by using of Abaqus/explicit platform. The chip formation and cutting forces during drilling process has been simulated. Simulation model has been developed A using shear damage and Johnson cook damage law. Drilling uses a rotating tool (multi point cutting tool) in order to penetrate the workpiece and generating chips. The explicit FEM code was developed and it was found that adaptive meshing, element deletion, mass scaling and damage evolution techniques are necessary to enable the solution. The results of the finite element model are in agreement with the experimental findings