0000000000073023
AUTHOR
Marion Merklein
Process Mechanics in Friction Stir Welding of Magnesium Alloys: Experimental and Numerical Analysis
Light weight construction is a major task within automotive and aircraft industry due to lower fuel consumption or increase the possible payload. Structural or exterior shell components are more and more manufactured out of aluminum alloys for this reason. A further weight reduction could be achieved by the substitution of aluminum alloys by magnesium alloys. Also the application of blanks with a varying thickness is a possibility to realize light weight design. To combine the advantages of weight reduction by the use of magnesium alloys and tailored welded blanks (TWBs), an effective joining technique is required. Friction Stir Welding can be used for difficult to be welded magnesium alloy…
Effect of Process Parameters on the Joint Integrity in Friction Stir Welding of Ti-6Al-4V Lap Joints
Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a solid state welding process patented in 1991 by TWI; initially adopted to weld aluminum alloys, is now being successfully used also for magnesium alloys, copper and steels. The wide diffusion the process is having is due to the possibility to weld materials traditionally considered difficult to be welded or “unweldable” by traditional fusion welding processes due to peculiar thermal and chemical material properties. Additionally, the process allows welding a wide range of sheet thickness (up to 50mm) avoiding typical fusion welding processes defects, like cavities and porosities, with no shielding gas, filling material or joint preparation. Recently, researc…
On the Solid Bonding Phenomena in Linear Friction Welding and Accumulative Roll Bonding Processes: Numerical Simulation Insights
Solid Bonding based welding processes allow to obtain defect free joints with low residual stress and low distortion. However, the engineering and optimization of solid bonding processes is difficult and requires a large number of time and cost consuming test trials. In this way, proper numerical models are essential tools permitting effective process design. The aim of this research was the comparison of the material process conditions during two different manufacturing processes taking advantage of the same metallurgical phenomenon, namely solid bonding. Linear Friction Welding, used to weld non-axisymmetric components and Accumulative Roll Bonding, used to increase the mechanical propert…
Friction Stir Knead Welding of steel aluminium butt joints
To develop steel aluminium-tailored hybrids in a butt joint for sheets in a thickness of about 1 mm conventional Friction Stir Welding is not feasible due to a high distortion of the welded specimen. Contrary to Friction Stir Welding the tool used for Friction Stir Knead Welding has no pin wherefore higher welding speeds can be realised. Due to the fact that this is a newer process, applied for patent in 2005, the cut contours of the edges and their variations have to be optimised by numerical analysis to transfer a maximum of load in order to improve the formability. The examined materials in this paper are steel DC04, as well as the aluminium alloys AA5182 and AA6016 in sheet thicknesses …
Micro and macro mechanical characterization of friction stir welded Ti–6Al–4V lap joints through experiments and numerical simulation
Abstract Lap joints of Ti–6Al–4V were produced and the effect of the main process parameters was studied through macro and micro investigations highlighting mechanical resistance, microhardness profiles, grain size and phase distributions. A dedicated numerical model was used to link the input process parameters to temperature and strain distributions and to the final microstructure in the welded joint. It is found that the strain produced in the stir zone by proper combination of process parameters plays a fundamental role in the final microstructure and mechanical properties of the joints.
Modelling Aspects in Accumulative Roll Bonding Process by Explicit Finite Element Analysis
Accumulative Roll-Bonding (ARB) process is a severe plastic deformation (SPD) process, capable of developing grains below 1 μm in diameter and improving mechanical properties of the material. In this study, the authors compared two different FE-codes with respect of its applicability for numerical analysis of the ARB process. Modelling this process was achieved using the explicit code for Abaqus/CAE both in 2D and 3D. The proposed model was used to assess the impact of ARB cycles on the final material properties. The numerical results in 2D and 3D were compared and contrasted. The research work presented in this paper is focused on the simulation optimization based on CPU time minimization.…
Modeling of the Plastic Characteristics of AA6082 for the Friction Stir Welding Process
Focus of this paper is to model the plastic forming behavior of AA6082, in order to develop the numerical FE analysis of the friction stir welding processes and the simulation of subsequent forming processes. During the friction stir welding process, the temperatures reached are until 500 °C and have a fundamental role for the correct performance of the process so the material data has to show a temperature dependency. Because of the tool rotation a strain rate sensitivity of the material has to be respected as well. In this context, the general material characteristics of AA6082 were first identified for different stress states. For the uniaxial state the standard PuD-Al used in the automo…
Investigations on the Mechanical Properties and Formability of Friction Stir Welded Tailored Blanks
Tight competition characterizing automotive industries in the last decades has determined a strong research effort aimed to improve utilized processes and materials in sheet stamping. As far as the latter are regarded light weight alloys, high strength steels and tailored blanks have been increasingly utilized with the aim to reduce parts weight and fuel consumptions. In the paper the mechanical properties and formability of tailored welded blanks made of a precipitation hardenable aluminum alloy but with different sheet thicknesses, have been investigated: both laser welding and friction stir welding have been developed to obtain the tailored blanks. For both welding operations a wide rang…