Tue, 14 February, 2023
TWI’s Friction Stir Welding Technology Manager, Jonathan Martin, will present at the upcoming TMS 2023 Annual Meeting and Exhibition in San Diego, California.
This year will be TMS’ 152nd cross-disciplinary Annual Meeting and Exhibition, bringing together over 4,000 engineers, scientists, leaders and professionals from the field of minerals, metals and materials, to share and exchange technical knowledge.
Held across 19-23 March, Jonathan will present two papers:
Advances in Steel FSW
Friction stir welding has been widely used for the fabrication of safety critical aluminium structures in the aerospace, road, rail and marine transport industries since its invention in 1991. Due to its ability to make high strength, tough, fatigue resistant welds with very low distortion, and the fact that the process can work underwater, considerable interest has been shown over many years in transferring the technology to the welding of steel. The difficulties in developing tools able to stir steel at the elevated temperatures required, in excess of 900 C, are now being overcome and the process is being developed for welding steel with an initial focus on marine applications. This paper discusses the technical advances being made at TWI and outlines the newly begun EU project “RESURGAM” which looks to develop the process for both the construction and repair of ships.
Assessing the Performance of Liquid Cooled Plates for Inverter Stacks Produced by CoreFlow
TWI Ltd has recently invented a new sub-surface machining technique called CoreFlow™. This new solid-state process is an evolution from friction stir welding and friction stir channeling that allows for sub-surface networks of channels to be machined within monolithic metallic parts in a single manufacturing step. The present investigation addresses the manufacturing of liquid cooled plates for inverter stack assemblies typically used in transport applications and power generation. Channels exhibiting a cross section of 6x2mm were produced in AA6082-T6 plates measuring 300x200mm, with a thickness of 8mm. Serpentine prototypes were produced and benchmarked against traditional manufacturing methods for a number of key performance variables, namely thermal efficiency, pressure loss and pump flow energy consumption. Cold plates manufactured by CoreFlow™ showed improved thermal efficiency with respect to conventional press-lock smooth copper tubing cold plates with comparable volume for a given flow rate. Data on the economic savings are presented.
Jonathan has more than 20 years’ experience in Friction Stir Welding technology, providing R&D support to TWI Member companies worldwide. He also organises the International Symposium on Friction Stir Welding, which will next be held in Kyoto, Japan in May 2024.