On the performances and wear of WC-diamond like carbon coated tools in drilling of CFRP/Titanium stacks

The use of hybrid structures made of CFRP and titanium alloys is growing more and more in the last years in the aerospace industry due to the high strength to weight ratio. Because of their very different characteristics, the mechanical fastening represent the most effective joining technique for these materials. As a consequence, drilling process plays a key role in the assembly. The one shot drilling, i.e. the contemporary drilling of the stack of the two materials, seems to be the best option both in terms of time saving and assembly accuracy. Nevertheless, due to the considerable different machinability of fiber reinforced plastics and metallic materials, the one shot drilling is a critical process both for the holes quality and for the tools wear. This research was carried out to study the effectiveness of new generation tools in the drilling of CFRP/Titanium stacks. The tools are made of sintered grains of tungsten carbide (WC) in a binder of cobalt and coated with Diamond like carbon (DLC), and are characterized by a patented geometry; they mainly differ in parent WC grain size and binder percentage. Both the cutting forces and the wear phenomena were accurately investigated and the results were analyzed as a function of number of holes and their quality. The results show a clear increase of the cutting forces with the number of holes for all the used drilling tools. Moreover, abrasive wear phenomena that affect initially the tools coating layer were observed. © 2016 Author(s).