Effect of drilling process parameters on natural fiber reinforced basket epoxy composites using grey relational analysis

In industrial and technological development of recent years, constant increase in quality of machining is the key motto and natural composites are playing predominant role in this path. They have taken prominent place due to their prevailing properties (strength to weight ratio, wear resistant eco-friendly, corrosion resistant, recyclability, toughness), their availability, cheap manufacturing process and high quality that fetched composites great demand and made the researchers to use composites in many real world applications Natural fibers are being machined by several machining process one among them is drilling. Natural composites are heterogeneous in nature so it is difficult to drill them, as drill bit need to pass alternatively through fiber and matrix and may cause the composites to delaminate, while performing Drilling process, there are many parameters that need to be studied such as spindle speed (rpm), feed rate (mm/min), drill bit diameter that are influencing highly on the drilled hole. In this work we optimize the thrust force, delamination, torque; using Taguchi and Grey regression techniques.The natural composites are subjected to drilling with different drill diameters of varied sizes. The worked results give us the clear picture that the quality of drilled hole can be improved by selecting optimal value for the input characteristics using grey relational technique. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.