Study on the effects of tool tile angle, offset and plunge depth on friction stir welding of poly(methyl methacrylate) T-joint

Abstract

The effects of tilt angle (TTA), plunge depth (TPD) and offset (TO) of tool in friction stir welding of poly(methyl methacrylate) T-joint were investigated. To understand better the effects of process parameter, thermomechanical simulation of joint was assessed. The results seem to show that at higher TPD and TTA, frictional heat increases. Woven tissue structure joint line forms after friction stir welding of poly(methyl methacrylate) sheets. The distance of woven layers was affected by TPD and TTA, while TO do not significantly affect heat generation of joint. The best material flow and adequate heat are generated at 0 mm TA, 2° TTA and 0.2 mm TPD, respectively. The highest flexural and tensile strength of friction stir welded joint were approximately 93% and 90% of as-received poly(methyl methacrylate), respectively. Crack forking was detected on the fractured surface of flexural samples and crack path was detected in the vicinity of shrinkage holes at fracture surface of tensile samples. These holes and degradation of poly(methyl methacrylate) during friction stir welding process decrease strength and hardness of the joint.

The Influence of Tool Shape and Process Parameters on the Mechanical Properties of AW-3004 Aluminium Alloy Friction Stir Welded Joints

“…The lack of penetration in the other joints may have been caused by the plunge depth of the tool being too low as it was proven to be one of the causes of the defect. If the plunge depth is too low, the material cannot be stirred on the complete surface of bonded metals [25]. In the joints made with the cylindrical threaded pin, a ductile fracture appeared.…”

“…Apart from rotational and welding speeds, another significant parameter influencing the process is the shape of the tool used [20][21][22][23][24][25]. The FSW tool consists of a shoulder and pin, and both parts may come in a great variety of shapes [20].…”

Friction Stir Welding and Friction Spot Stir Welding Processes of Polymers—State of the Art

“…Force applied during the dwell phase when load-control is involved in the process [15,29,[42][43][44][45]48,49,51,52] A graphical representation of the ranges analyzed in different references for the tool rotation speed, welding speed, tool tilt angle and pin geometry is depicted in Figure 12. The comparison in Figure 12a indicates a general consistency concerning the tool rotation speed as most of the studies focused the range 1000-2000 RPM.…”

“…Despite some studies concerning numerical modeling of friction stir welding of metals, only a couple of studies were performed [51,71]. These studies involved combined 3D non-linear heat transfer equations containing the internal rotational heat source, the momentum conservation principle, and temperature-dependent material properties [29,52,72,73] to simulate LFSW of PMMA and PC. Some assumptions were applied to simplify the governing equations for faster solving without affecting the accuracy, including:…”

Effects of Rapid Cooling on Properties of Aluminum-Steel Friction Stir Welded Joint

“…The workpieces are intermixed mechanically by the traverse movement of the tool along the joint line, and mechanical pressure forms the smooth material [ 10 , 11 ]. At first, the FSW process was used for aluminum alloys [ 6 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]; however over time, the capacity and potential of FSW proved that this method could be employed not only for aluminum alloys, but also for other purposes such as joining of similar and dissimilar polymeric and metallic materials [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. One of the useful structures that can be made by FSW is a steel-aluminum dissimilar joint [ 12 , 26 , 27 ].…”