Identification of Cutting Mechanisms in Orthogonal Cutting of Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites

In recent years, composite materials such as fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) have gained considerable attention in the aircraft and automobile industries due to their light weight, high modulus and specific strength. In practice, control of chip formation appears to be the most serious problem since chip formation mechanism in composite machining has significant effects on the finished surface ［1,2,3,4,5］. Current study will discuss frequency analysis based on autoregressive (AR) time series model and process characterization in orthogonal cutting of a fiber-matrix composite materials. A sparsely distributed idealized model composite material, namely a glass reinforced polyester (GFRP) was used as workpiece. Analysis method employs a force sensor and the signals from the sensor are processed using AR time series model. The experimental correlation between the different chip formation mechanisms and model coefficients are established.(omitted)