Review of Drilling for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer, as one type of composites, is composed of carbon fiber as the reinforcement and resin as the matrix, which is widely used in aerospace, vehicle manufacturing, ship transportation and other fields, due to their excellent properties such as light weight, corrosion resistance and fatigue resistance. The anisotropic and non-homogeneous of carbon fiber reinforced polymer bring great challenges and difficulties to drilling process, especially the connection and assembly of large composite materials cannot avoid the processing of small hole structures; however, the stress concentration generated around the holes can significantly reduce the fatigue resistance of the connectors. Based on this, this review covers drilling technologies of carbon fiber reinforced polymer, the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies. First, the research progress of drilling of carbon fiber reinforced polymer with different processing methods was reviewed, and the main defects produced by different processing methods were analyzed, including the surface morphologies (such as edge burr, tearing, heat affected zone, surface roughness, etc.) and the sidewall morphological characteristics of holes (such as fiber delamination, hole taper, sidewall roughness, etc.). Second, according to the strength and failure mode of laminated laminates, the influence of drilling on the performance of laminated laminates was reviewed. Finally, the development trend and prospects of drilling technology for carbon fiber reinforced polymer were summarized and discussed.