Influence of reinforcement on optimized weld bead properties of friction stir welded AL6063/nano fly ash composite

Abstract

In this work, it was focused on predicting the contribution of nano fly ash (NFA) reinforcement material on weld joints of aluminium metal matrix composites (AMCs). The AMCs were produced through stir casting with 0%, 1%, 2%, 3% weight of NFA reinforcement. Weld joints of AMC plates were fabricated through Friction stir welding (FSW) process by considering %wt of NFA, tool feed rate (TFR) and tool rotational speed (TRS) as process parameters. Taguchi analysis has been used through a selection of L16 factorial design of experiments and subsequent mechanical properties were obtained for all L16 array of experiments. Predicted optimum values were determined by considering Taguchi response values and main effect plots at optimal conditions. The relative significance of individual process parameters were determined by ANOVA analysis. NFA has 78.73%, 90.95% and 79.93% contribution on tensile strength, Vickers Hardness number and impact strength respectively of AMC weld joints. ANOVA results revealed that the %NFA has high influence on all the mechanical properties of the FSW weld bead.