Author : Biswajit Parida, M M Mohapatra and Pankaj Biswas

The present study is on the development of friction stir welding (FSW) of commercial grade Al-alloy to study the effect of tool geometry on mechanical and micro-structural properties. The proposed research will include experiments related to the effect of FSW optimum process parameter on weldability of Al alloy. The present paper has been subdivided in to two different sections: 1. Study of Mechanical properties and 2. Study of micro-structural properties. Section-1 describes the effect of tool geometry on tensile strength and distribution of micro-hardness in different zones of FSW weld specimen and section-2 contains the microstructure characterization of different zones of friction stir welds. Two types of tool geometries have been used in the present work such as straight cylindrical (SC) and tapered cylindrical (TC). Tensile results shown an increase in ductility for welded joints compared to base metal. SC tools shown better strength compared to TC tools.

Keywords: FSW, weldability, mechanical properties, tensile strength, micro-hardness, microstructure.

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)