ELECTROCHEMICAL ANALYSIS ON FRICTION STIR WELDED AND LASER WELDED 6XXX ALUMINIUM ALLOYS T-JOINTS

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) and Laser Welding (LW) can be successfully employed to weld aluminium alloys, in many cases overcoming the difficulties encountered with more conventional welding processes like MIG or TIG. The corrosion resistance of the welded joint remains, however, an important issue, especially in applications (like in aircrafts), where corrosion can induce structural failure: the weld region has often lower mechanical resistance in comparison with the parent material and a decrease in its corrosion resistance, especially when the corrosion damage can represent a potential crack initiation site, can be unacceptable in components design. In this work the corrosion resistance …