An improvement in drilling of SiCp/glass fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composites using response surface methodology and multi-objective particle swarm optimization

The growing dominance in terms of industrial applications has helped polymer-based composite materials in conquering new markets relentlessly. But the presence of fibrous residuals and abrasive particles as reinforcement in polymer matrix composites (PMCs) affects the output quality characteristics (OQCs) of microdrilling operations. The OQC aims at reducing overcuts and momentous material removal rate (MRR). In such perception, multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) evident to be a suitable optimization technique for prediction and process selection in manufacturing industries. The present paper focuses on multi-objective optimization of electrochemical discharge drilling parameters during drilling of SiC _p and glass fiber-reinforced PMCs using MOPSO. The response surface methodology (RSM)-based central composite design was used for the experiment planning. Electrolyte concentration, interelectrode gap, duty factor, and voltage were used as process parameters, whereas MRR and overcut were observed as OQCs. The obtained experimental results were initially optimized by RSM-based desirability function and later with multiresponse optimization technique MOPSO to achieve best possible MRR with lower possible overcut. The comparative analysis proves that OQCs can be effectively improved by using MOPSO.