Drilling is a unit operation of great importance in industry. As an example, the cost of drilling may amount to as much as one percent of the cost of an airplane. Drilling is not, however, a well-understood operation. Tool geometries, feed rates, and rotational speeds are selected on the basis of experience and trial runs. Extensive drilling of new engineering materials requires extensive experimentation, and much grinding of drills having different shapes. Simulation, by computer graphics, will be used to investigate various aspects of the drill's cutting action. Models developed in earlier research will be utilized and a variety of tool designs (point, flute, and helix angle geometries) will be studied. The computer simulations will be validated by experiment.
