Industrial perforation of lightweight materials

Lightweight composite materials have great strength in relation to its weight and can be useful in a variety of applications. Making holes for screw joints and penetrations are often part of a design, and often the part that is most critical for total production economy when lightweight material to be introduced into a product.

In this project, lead by Swerea SICOMP, manufacturing technologies for piercing of lightweight structures for fiber composites, sandwich materias and mixed materials (metalcomposite) will be developed.

Three different applications designed for workshop, flight and space will be studied with respect to the piercing with 1) vibration assisted drilling, 2) orbital drilling and 3) water jet cutting. The manufacturing technical solutions will result in a significantly improved production economy for these products and increased competitive advantage.

The task for Örebro University is to develop methods for evaluation of damage to the holes by the different processes based on computed tomography.