NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS OF TRANSIENT TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN FRICTION STIR SPOT WELDING OF ALUMINUM ALLOY AA6061

Abstract

AbstractFriction stir spot welding (FSSW) is a powerful and superior alternative to resistance spotwelding and riveting for fabrication of aluminum sheet metal structures. The objective is tostudy the variation of transient temperature in a friction stir spot welded plate of AA6061Aluminum Alloy. Numerical and experimental investigations were performed to study thetemperature distribution during this process. Two thermocouples (type K) were placed at twospecified locations from the pin hole to measure the transient temperature during FSSWwelding process. Numerically, 3D finite element model was built using ANSYS workbenchVer.15 to simulate the thermal model during welding. The torque and axial load weremeasured experimentally to determine the coefficient of friction, which used with the otherparameters, to find the applied heat flux for the welding process. The temperaturedistributions of the specimens welded by three tools with different pins; i.e. cylindrical,tapered and triangular, at constant other FSSW parameters, were investigated and comparedwith the experiment temperature measured using the thermocouples to validate the results.The results show that the temperature produced from the welded specimen with cylindricalpin shape has the highest temperature distributions due to high axial load and torque ascompared with other tool pin profiles. Also the results show good agreement betweennumerical and experimental with a percentage error (-3.09 – 7.83) %.