EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON INFLUENCE OF FUNCTIONALIZED MULTI-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES ON SURFACE ROUGHNESS IN DRILLING OF CFRP COMPOSITES

This paper presents the effect of carboxyl functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes on the surface roughness of drilled holes in carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminates. Drilling tests were conducted on CFRP laminates fabricated with neat and carboxyl functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes filled epoxy matrix. The drilling process parameters evaluated are feed rate, spindle speed, point angle and drill diameter. The surface roughness of the drilled holes' wall was measured. Response surface methodology approach was used to analyse the effect of cutting parameters. Surface roughness was found to increase on increasing the feed rate, point angle and drill diameter while it decreased with an increase in spindle speed. An average reduction of 27.96% in surface roughness was observed when carboxyl functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes were used as a filler.