ABSTRACT

Friction welding of 5056 aluminum alloy similar material was carried out in order to examine the relationship between heat input and joint performance. The joint performance is evaluated by tensile test. The heat input is a heat source for welding solid materials and is classified into six categories, viz. friction heat input and deformation input during friction stage, upset stage and total stage. The most important heat input for evaluating the joint performance among these heat input was experimentally investigated through the tensile strength of welded joints because the friction mechanism is much complex. It was found that the deformation heat input during the upset stage was correlated well with the joint performance, and the sound joints were obtained with the deformation heat input over 100J/s. Moreover, it was recognized that the sound joints could be obtained with upset burn-off length over 2mm.

INTRODUCTION

Friction welding is applied in many fields because of welding of round bars is easy, welding of the dissimilar materials is possible and so on. However, the friction welding process has complicated mechanisms, due to the heat source is the self-heating and the heated plane becomes directly the welding plane (Fukushima and Hasui, 1972). Therefore, the fundamental welding mechanism has not been clarified yet, then the setting of the appropriate welding condition is difficult for some materials and moreover the optimum welding condition also varies with friction welding machines. The aspect of the friction surface varies with the welding time during the friction welding, because the friction surface is constantly pulled out generating a burr (Hasui and Fukushima, 1975). Therefore, whether which time heat input during the welding process contributes to the welding is uncertain.

This content is only available via PDF.
You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.