Simulation of friction stir welding of aluminium alloy AA5052 – tailor welded blanks

Abstract

Tailor welded blanks (TWBs) have been utilized by automotive industries to meet the light-weighting demands. Achieving defect free joints in the TWBs of aluminum alloys is a major challenge. Friction stir welding (FSW) has been successful in producing metallurgically sound joints in identical and diverse aluminum alloys. The present work aims at developing a Finite element method, which was used to explore the maximum temperature (Tp), contact status, plastic strain (PS) and energy input (EI) varied upon tool rotation speed (TRS), shoulder diameter (SD), tool traverse speed (TTS) and thickness ratio (TR). The study explored the influence of the FSW process parameters on the responses using a hybrid model integrating the linear function and radial basis function.