Design and simulation of dust extraction for composite drilling

Due to its high strength-to-weight ratio, composite materials have been widely applied in aerospace manufacturing. However, some challenges are facing in fabrication and assembly of the parts with composite materials. One of them is how to collect the dwarf and dust generated from the drilling operation, especially in an open environment when the composite parts are assembled, since a large number of holes need generating to rivet the parts together when the parts with composite materials are assembled in an aircraft structure. The efficiency of dust extraction is crucial to the healthy operating environment and the quality of the assembled component. In this paper, three conceptual designs of automatic dust extraction are proposed and compared, and the best design with the hood fastened on the drilling spindle has been selected and analyzed. Its design parameters have been identified; a systematic procedure has been proposed for the design optimization; the process of the dust extraction has been modeled and simulated using the COSMOSFloWorks. Taguchi method is applied to optimize the design. The process of the dust extraction has been validated through animation.