The cutting process and damage mechanism of large thickness CFRP based on water jet guided laser processing. (September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wu, Yaowen; Zhang, Guangyi; Wang, Jianxin; Chao, Yang; Zhang, Wenwu
• Is Part Of: Optics & laser technology. Volume 141(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-09
• Subjects: Water jet guided laser processing -- CFRP -- Cutting process -- Large thickness -- Damage mechanism; Optics -- Periodicals; Lasers -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 621.366
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optlastec.2021.107140
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0030-3992

Abstract

Highlights: The water jet guided laser processing technology is able to solve the problems existing in cutting CFRP, such as reducing HAZ, reducing machining stress and improving processing depth, etc., which cannot be achieved by the traditional machining technology and the dry laser processing technology. With the water jet guided laser processing technology, high-quality cutting of large thickness (10 mm) CFRP is realized by optimizing the process parameters and adopting the parallel path layered scanning method. The influences of the carbon-fiber arrangement direction and the laser cutting path on the CFRP cutting damage mechanism are analyzed for the first time, and three damage modes are summarized, namely carbon fiber's exposing, falling-off and pulling-out. Abstract: Carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites (CFRP) is a composite material with resin as matrix and carbon fiber as reinforcement. It has been widely used in aerospace, military products, and automotive industries. However, CFRP is prone to damage because of its complex anisotropy and low interlayer strength, so it is a typical difficult-to-process material. Water jet guided laser processing technology is a combination of laser and water jet processing technology, which has the characteristics of no wear, no contact, flexible processing, and potential advantages of reducing HAZ and increasing cutting depth. In this paper, the water jet guided laser processing technology is used to perform cutting experiment for CFRP processing of low damage and large depth. In the experiment, the influencing law of the process parameters such as laser power, CFRP feed speed and water jet speed on the cutting results is obtained; then the cutting thickness of 1 mm, 2 mm, 4 mm and 10 mm CFRP is realized by adopting the parallel path layered scanning method. Moreover, the influences of carbon fiber arrangement direction and laser cutting path on the CFRP cutting damage mechanism are analyzed for the first time, and three damage mechanisms (exposing, falling-off and pulling-out) are summarized, which will provide the reference for the high precision cutting of large thickness CFRP.