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TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 816/2004
S D Smith
Background
Friction stir welding (FSW) has provided users of light metals with a new process that has many advantages over the traditional ways of joining these materials. Engineers are increasingly using FSW in new applications. The novelty of using FSW in many different applications means that a large number of test welds and a large amount of weld testing is needed to develop friction stir welding procedures. The development effort associated with providing optimised welding parameters (rotation and traversing speed) for new welds could be reduced by using analytical and computational fluid dynamic models. TWI has therefore been developing novel methods of FSW analysis.
Results from both coupled analytical models and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analyses of FSW are presented in this report. Both are developments from existing methods of analysis. The new methods avoid the need for calibration that exists in current methods. This is a significant improvement because it means that models can be predictive.
Objectives
- To present a coupled analytical model of FSW and to compare it to test results for FSW power and torque.
- To present a method of using CFD to model FSW and to compare the results with FSW test data.