Dry Drilling of Fiber Metal Laminates CF/AA2024. A Preliminary Study

Carbon Fiber (CF)/Metallic Alloy (MA) laminar structures, also known as Fiber Metal Laminates (FML) allow diminishing the airship weight. Because of that the use of these materials is growing continuously in the aerospace industry. These composites materials need to be drilled because of the assembly requirements in the different airship elements. The most common problems that can appeared when those structures are machined are related with the interaction of the tool with dissimilar materials, which need different cutting parameters for the optimized machining process. This work reports on the results about a study of the dry drilling processes of hybrid composites Carbon Fiber/aluminum alloy, and especially CF/AA2024.