Aluminum Alloys by using Friction Stir Welding

The Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a latest process of Advanced Welding Technology and was invented in 1991 by The Welding Institute (TWI) at Cambridge, in United Kingdom. In 1995, Friction Stir Welding has been used frequently for welding of high strength aluminium alloys such as AA6061, AA6063. Etc. which are difficult to weld by conventional fusion welding techniques. Friction welding (FW) is a collection of a series of friction-based solid state joining processes which can produce high quality welds of different components with either similar or dissimilar materials and has been attracting increasing attention. The overall aim of this study is to weld two plates of AA 6063 using different tool profiles and to optimize the parameters Ince tool rotational speed. Tool profile, depth of cut, feed etc. affecting the properties of welded joints& also study is to get the optimum parameters for the materials under considerations, to investigate the Heated Affected Zone, Mechanical Affected Zone and Weld Nugget (WN) besides to study the defects occurring during welding process by applying different parameters chosen. The welding process was done by using conventional milling machine. Three experiments being used are the Tensile Testing, Optical Microscopy (OM) and Hardening test to get the strength of the joint and the metallographic studies. The findings also found out that suitable parameters being choose give less defect. Therefore, at higher speed and lower tool plunge length, the joint strength decreased due to lack of bonding between aluminium and steel.