Machining Of Polymer Composites

This excellent volume will serve as an indispensable reference and source book for process design, tool and production engineers in composite manufacturing. It provides the reader with a comprehensive treatment of the theory of machining as it applies to fiber reinforced polymer composites. It covers the latest technical advances in the area of machining and tooling, and discusses the applications of fiber reinforced polymer composites in the aircraft and automotive industries.

This book covers current advances and practices in machining fibre-reinforced polymer composites under various conventional and nonconventional processes. It presents recent research and practices for effective and efficient machining of difficult-to-cut material, providing the technological ‘know-how’ on delamination-free of drilling, milling, trimming, and other cutting processes on fibre-reinforced polymer composites. It also guides the reader on the selection of optimum machining parameters, tool materials, as well as tool geometry. This book is of interest to academicians, students, researchers, practitioners, and industrialists working in aerospace, automotive, marine, and construction industries.

This book covers a wide range of conventional and non-conventional machining processes of various composite materials, including polymer and metallic-based composites, nanostructured composites and green/natural composites. It presents state-of-the-art academic work and industrial developments in material fabrication, machining, modelling and applications, together with current practices and requirements for producing high-quality composite components. There are also dedicated chapters on physical properties and fabrication techniques of different composite material groups. The book also has chapters on health and safety considerations when machining composite materials and recycling composite materials. The contributors present machining composite materials in terms of operating conditions; cutting tools; appropriate machines; and typical damage patterns following machining operations. This book serves as a useful reference for manufacturing engineers, production supervisors, tooling engineers, planning and application engineers, and machine tool designers. It can also benefit final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students, as it provides comprehensive information on the machining of composite materials to produce high-quality final components. The book chapters were authored by experienced academics and researchers from four continents and nine countries including Canada, China, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, United Kingdom and the USA.

This book offers an insight into the primary and secondary manufacturing of different class of polymer matrix composites (PMCs). The major focus is on the fabrication of a variety of PMCs with substantial coverage of various processing techniques and related advantages and limitations. The book also describes secondary manufacturing processes such as machining and joining of PMCs and provides the know-how related to developing these techniques. It discusses recently commercialized tools and techniques and highlights the opportunities provided by the design and development of newer cutting tools and machining methods. The book covers material selection guidelines, product manufacturability, product development process, and cost-estimating techniques that help readers to understand where a process fits within the overall scheme and which is appropriate for a particular component. This book provides professionals with valuable information related to composites product manufacturing as well as state-of-the-art knowledge in this field.

This book covers manufacturing and processing of various natural filler-based polymer composites using conventional and advanced machining processes. It presents various experimental case studies conducted by the authors on conventional and advanced machining processes of various natural filler (jute, hemp, banana stem and sisal)-based polymer composites materials. The authors report on the effects of machining processes on the machining properties, such as material removal rate, surface quality, geometric accuracy, process tine and environment while machining various materials.

This brief focus on drilling of polymer matrix composites for aerospace and defence applications. It gives an introduction to machining of polymer composites and discusses drilling as a processing of composites.

The potential application areas for polymer composites are vast. While techniques and methodologies for composites design are relatively well established, the knowledge and understanding of post-design issues lag far behind. This leads to designs and eventually composites with disappointing properties and unnecessarily high cost, thus impeding a wider industrial acceptance of polymer composites. Manufacturing of Polymer Composites completely covers pre- and post-design issues. While the book enables students to become fully comfortable with composites as a possible materials choice, it also provides sufficient knowledge about manufacturing-related issues to permit them to avoid common pitfalls and unmanufacturable designs. The book is a fully comprehensive text covering all commercially significant materials and manufacturing techniques while at the same time discussing areas of research and development that are nearing commercial reality.

In recent years, the application of composite materials hasincreased in various areas of science and technology due to theirspecial properties, namely for use in the aircraft, automotive,defence, aerospace and other advanced industries. Machiningcomposite materials is quite a complex task owing to itsheterogenity, and to the fact that reinforcements are extremelyabrasive. In modern engineering, high demands are placed oncomponents made of composites in relation to their dimensionalprecision as well as their surface quality. Due to these potentialapplications, there is a great need to understand the questionsassociated with machining composite materials. This book aims to provide the fundamentals and the recentadvances in the machining of composite materials (polymers, metalsand ceramics) for modern manufacturing engineering. The three partsof the book cover the machining of polymeric, metal and ceramicmatrix composites. This book can be used as a text book for the final year of anundergraduate engineering course or for those studyingmachining/composites at the postgraduate level. It can also serveas a useful work of reference for academics, manufacturing andmaterials researchers, manufacturing and mechanical engineers, andprofessionals in composite technology and related industries.