Friction stir welded structural materials: beyond Al-alloys

Abstract

The friction stir welding (FSW) technique is widely accepted to be one of the most significant welding techniques to emerge in the last 20 years. Friction stir welding of Al-alloys is now commonplace and is covered in several recent reviews, including one in this journal. Consequently, the technique is currently being used for joining of these alloys in various industrial applications. Complementary to these developments has been a dramatic increase in research into joining of other alloys and systems by FSW. This field is very active, but less mature. Thus, the aim of this review article is to build on our understanding of the fundamentals, as applied to Al-alloys that laid out in the previous review in this journal, and to address the current state-of-the-art of FSW developing beyond Al-alloys, including Mg-alloys, Cu-alloys, steels, Tialloys and metal matrix composites, focusing particularly on microstructural aspects, including texture formation, and the resulting properties of these joints. Material selection for tooling will also be covered to some extent while modelling studies of material flow during FSW are outside the scope of this paper. Finally, residual stresses are mentioned in a number of places and while these have been measured extensively for Al-alloy systems there are fewer measurements for other systems.

A Comparison of Different Finite Element Methods in the Thermal Analysis of Friction Stir Welding (FSW)

“…A comparison study is done by Threadgill et al [42] for the FSW of aluminum alloys and Çam [43] studied widely other alloys. Developments of microstructures and the properties of material during the FSW was done by He et al [44].…”

A Correlation between the Ultimate Shear Stress and the Thickness Affected by Intermetallic Compounds in Friction Stir Welding of Dissimilar Aluminum Alloy–Stainless Steel Joints

“…This phenomenon induces important microstructural changes [25]. Two process parameters were studied [26]: the rotational speed ω of the tool, ranging from 600 rpm to 2100 rpm, and the welding speed v in the 10-100 mm·min −1 range. The two parameters were studied from a Taguchi ANOVA DoE (Design of Experiment) plan with a L 16 resolution in order to localize the optimal region of the process parameters [27].…”

Friction stir welding of dissimilar joint of aluminum alloy 5083 and commercially pure titanium

“…Friction stir welding, which was developed and patented in the UK in the early 1990s by The Welding Institute (TWI), is usually used in welding of plates and is different from conventional friction welding [3,4]. In this technique, the plates-to-be-welded are clamped together rigidly in butt or overlap condition, and a stirring tool with a suitable geometry moves along them while the pieces-to-be-joined are moving over each other in conventional friction welding method.…”