OPTIMIZATION OF PROCESS PARAMETERS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF WELDING COMMERCIALLY PURE ALUMINUM AND COPPER FRICTION USING DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT

Sunil M, R Shobha

Abstract: A relatively new solid state joining technique which is energy efficient, environment friendly and versatile has been emerged in recent years. This process is named as Friction Stir Welding (FSW) for joining dissimilar metals which are generally used in aerospace, shipbuilding, automotive and locomotive industries due to its various advantages. Aluminum and copper has many applications in the above mentioned fields along with many applications in the electrical industry due its high electrical conductivities. The optimization of process parameters plays a very important role to achieve good quality weld. In the present study, optimization of process parameters for joining of pure Aluminum and pure copper is done by Friction stir welding. Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array was applied to design the experiments to select these parameters. The four factors at three different levels were selected and the factors being tool rotational speed, traverse speed, plunge depth and interface position. Weld quality is analyzed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Along with the calculation of volume fraction of porosity helps to find out the optimum parameters from the analysis 300rpm, 60mm/min, 4.93mm plunge depth and 1.2mm offset distance weld showed better joint with very less volume fraction of porosity than other set of parameters in the present study.

Keywords: Friction stir welding Optimization, L9 orthogonal array, design of experiment.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0528005