Micromachining of carbon nanofiller reinforced polymern nanocomposites

Abstract

The modern industry has been observing a growing demand for micromanufacturing of nanocomposites. This is driven by the miniaturisation trend to obtain products with micro features, high accuracy and light weight. From an engineering perspective, a miniaturised system can provide many benefits over its predecessors such as precision operation, mobility, or power consumption. Based on these, many techniques of micro-manufacturing have been applied, and micromilling of nanocomposites has shown a huge potential to be applied in this field due to its high capability in producing high-complexity-3D micro-features in a wide variety of workpiece materials, with high dimensional accuracy. However, micromilling of nanocomposites is deemed to be a complicated process due to the anisotropic, heterogeneous structure and advanced mechanical properties of these materials associated with the size effects in micromachining. Also, applying micromachining of nanocomposites is a principal approach to bridge the knowledge gap between macro and micro/nano cuttings which is identified by the so-called “size effect”. This physical phenomenon exhibits by the association between various factors including cutting edge radius, negative tool rake angle, work-piece material microstructure, and minimum uncut chip thickness (MUCT) (or minimum chip load). These lead to unstable cutting regimes, resulting in corrupted chip formation, tool vibration and subsequently, low machined surface quality as well as high tool wear rate. The enormous potential of applying micromachining of nanocomposites in manufacturing micro-products, as well as the need to fill the knowledge gap of the field of this study, has prompted researchers to uncover the underlying mechanisms and allow appropriate adaption of this technique in industrial applications.

Date of Award	1 May 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	Dehong Huo (Supervisor), Islam Shyha (Supervisor) & Jibran Khaliq (Supervisor)