No abstract

Micro Friction Stir welding (μFSW) has found its broader application in the area of packaging of MEMS devices, biomedical components, and joining of micro-mechanical assemblies. This study focuses on the effect of process parameters over the joint strength while joining Al6061-T6 and pure copper sheets of 0.3 mm thickness. Also, a coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) numerical model has been developed in the finite element suite of ABAQUS®. The boundary conditions used in the numerical simulation are kept almost similar to the experimental conditions to record thermal results. Moreover, an analytical approach for finding microhardness of welded joints using the Hall-Petch equation is also presented. The process parameters like rotational tool speed and welding traverse speed were found to be dominating in order to get better joint strength. The essential μFSW process parameters combination suggested that 1100rpm rotational speed, 20mm/min. traverse speed and 0.15mm pin depth (tool) result in superior flexural, thermal, and morphological properties of the joint. A good agreement between the experimental and simulation results was found with a maximum of 8% error in the predicted temperature values. The anticipated joint strength and surface characterization of the samples revealed a complex flow and homogeneous mixture at the pin-sheet interaction zone with higher micro-hardness values.