Avoiding carbon fibre reinforced polymer delamination during abrasive water jet piercing: a new piercing method

This paper presents a new method of piercing the carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) with abrasive water jet (AWJ), which can avoid delamination. The method consists of adding the abrasive particles in the water jet at the very beginning of jet formation, thus obtaining a mixed abrasive water jet during the first impact with the composite work piece. A new cutting system was designed and set up based on the proposed piercing method and was compared with a conventional AWJ cutting system. The main added values brought by this paper are: it validates our original concept; provides synthetic analyses, the effects of the AWJ homogeneity, and the abrasive inlet angle on the CFRP delamination, and it brings a complete set of recommendations on how to overcome the industrial difficulties caused by the delamination of the composite materials, during the piercing with AWJ.