Published Paper Details:

There is an increasing trend to use products manufactured from the Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics or Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites in the industry like aerospace, automotive, sports, medical, renewable energy etc. It is because of the lighter weight, higher strength, hence, higher strength-to-weight ratio of these materials, their higher corrosion resistance, higher fatigue resistance etc. Manufacturing of products from CFRP composites need precise machining, including cutting. Cutting of these materials is very difficult and inefficient with non-laser traditional techniques. Using continuous wave (cw) or pulsed fiber lasers solves many of these limitations of cutting CFRP composites. These processes have been optimized by many researchers for reducing the heat affected zones (HAZ) by optimizing the laser parameters like its power, pulse duration, feeding speed etc. Finally the environmental hazards of laser-based cutting of CFRP composites and the safety measures are also discussed in this paper.