Friction Stir Lap Welding Thin Aluminum Alloy Sheets
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High Temperature Materials and Processes 2020; 39: 663–670 Research Article Tao Wang#, Xue Gong#, Shude Ji*, Gang Xue*, and Zan Lv Friction stir lap welding thin aluminum alloy sheets https://doi.org/10.1515/htmp-2020-0024 received September 24, 2019; accepted December 3, 2019 1 Introduction Abstract: In this work, thin aluminum alloy sheets with As a solid-state joining method, friction stir welding thickness of 0.8 mm were friction stir lap welded using (FSW) was invented in 1991 [1–3]. The peak temperature small shoulder plunge depths of 0 and 0.1 mm. The joint during FSW is always lower than the melting point of the formation, microstructure and mechanical properties were base metal (BM)[4,5]. Thus, FSW serves as a promising investigated. Results show that voids appear inside the method, avoiding fusion defects [6–9]. Al alloys are stir zone when the small plunge depth of 0 mm is used widely used in modern industries because of their advan- because the tool shoulder cannot exert a good material- tages of low densities, high strengths, good corrosion collecting effect at such low plunge depth. A plunge depth resistances and fatigue properties [10,11]. FSW has been of 0.1 mm causes tight contact between the shoulder and widely used to join various kinds of Al alloys and the the material and thus results in good material-collecting microstructure and mechanical properties of the welded effect, which is helpful to eliminate the void. Sound joints joints have been studied [12–17]. are attained at a wide range of welding parameters when In actual engineering applications, Al alloys of var- using the shoulder plunge depth of 0.1 mm. No crack is ious thicknesses are required [18]. Researchers studied observed inside the bonding ligament. The joints own higher the joining of the alloys [19–21]. In case of thick sheet ( ) failure loads when the retreating side RS of the joint bares FSW joint, the joint consists of various microstructure the main load during the lap shear tests. The shear failure and mechanical properties [19–23]. Martinez et al. [21] fi load rst increases and then decreases with increasing the studied the microstructure and mechanical properties of rotating and welding speeds, and the maximum failure load thick 7449 Al alloy FSW joint and found that the joint - of6419Nisobtainedat600rpmand150mm/min.Thehard bottom had higher hardness compared to that of the ness of the joint presents a “W” morphology and the BM. The heat gradient along the thickness resulted in minimum hardness is obtained at the heat affected zone. different microstructures in the joint. Upadhyay and The joints present tensile fracture and shear fracture when Reynolds [22] investigated the effect of the backing plates the advancing side and RS bare the main loads, respectively. on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a Keywords: friction stir lap welding, thin sheets, secondary 25.4-mm-thick AA6061 FSW joint and reported that the phase, bonding ligament, lap shear failure load back plates had significant effect on temperature at the joint root. Buchibabu et al. [23] welded a thick Al–Zn–Mg alloy and investigated the microstructure and mechanical # Xue Gong and Tao Wang contributed equally to this work properties of the joints. They reported that the optimum mechanical properties were achieved with a low rotating speed of 350 rpm. * Corresponding author: Shude Ji, College of Aerospace For thin Al alloys sheets, low heat input is always Engineering, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, People’s Republic of China, e-mail: [email protected] needed during welding. However, joining thin sheets * Corresponding author: Gang Xue, Hull Structure Steel and Process has more problems such as thickness reduction and sheet Laboratory, LuoYang Ship Material Research Institute, Luo Yang warping. Therefore, joining thin Al alloy sheets also 471023, People’s Republic of China, e-mail: [email protected] attracted a plenty of attention [24–27]. Ahmed and Saha Tao Wang: Hull Structure Steel and Process Laboratory, LuoYang [24] developed a new fixture for FSW of thin Al alloy ’ Ship Material Research Institute, Luo Yang 471023, People s [ ] - - Republic of China sheets. Huang et al. 25 used two tools to join 0.5 mm Xue Gong, Zan Lv: College of Aerospace Engineering, Shenyang thick 6061 Al alloy and reported that thickness reduction Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, People’s Republic of China of joints was lower than 2% under rotational velocities Open Access. © 2020 Tao Wang et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 664 Tao Wang et al. higher than 1,500 rpm. For FSW, another joint type was The metallographic samples and tensile specimens lap joint. Friction stir lap welding (FSLW) is formed by were cut by an electrical discharge cutting machine. two or more overlapped sheets. Similarly, lap joint is The metallographic samples underwent a standard polish formed at solid state and therefore owns high properties. procedure and were observed on an optical microscope To the author’s knowledge, no study has focused on (OM; Olympus–GX71, Olympus Corporation) and a scan- lap joint of thin sheets. Therefore, in this work, 2024-T4 ning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy thin Al alloy sheets were lap welded. Different sleeve dispersive X-ray spectrometer after etching using Keller’s plunge depths were used, and the microstructure and reagent. The ISO 25239 was the standard used in this work mechanical properties of the lap joints were studied. for shear testing. The width of the lap shear specimen was 20 mm (Figure 1c). Vickers hardness was measured using an HVS-1000 Vickers hardness tester by a step of 0.5 mm. The testing force of 10 g was applied and the dwell time 2 Experimental was 10 s. Two lines across the joint were tested. The first line was located at the center of the upper sheet and the The 2024-T4 Al alloys of 0.8 mm thick were chosen as the second line at the lower sheet, and its distance from the BM. The dimensions of the BMs were 300 × 50 mm. Before bonding ligament was 0.2 mm. Lap shear tests were per- welding, the sheets were cleaned using 500 # emery formed on an Instron 8801 testing machine at a speed of papers to wipe off the oxide films. FSW-3LM-4012 machine 3 mm/min under room temperature. After the lap shear was used. The dimensions of the tool are shown in Figure 1a. tests, the fracture morphologies were observed using SEM. The diameter of the shoulder was 13.5 mm. The root and tip diameters of the pin were 6 and 5 mm, respectively. The length of the pin was 0.7 mm. Two sheets were lap combined at a width of 70 mm (Figure 1b). Rotating 3 Result and discussion speeds of 400, 600, 800 and 1,000 rpm and welding speed of 50, 100, 150 and 200 mm/min were used. The Figure 2 shows the joint cross section using the plunge titling angle was 2.5°. depth of 0 mm. The shoulder surface slightly contacted Figure 1: Tool used in experiment (a) and schematic of the welding (b) and lap shear specimen (c). Friction stir lap welding thin aluminum alloy sheets 665 (TMAZ), and SZ. Figure 4 shows the joint cross sections at different welding speeds. The cross sections presented little difference with increase in welding speed. Heat input was reduced at high welding speed, leading to narrower HAZ and TMAZ. At 150 and 200 mm/min, the upper sheets showed a little distortion (Figure 4b and c). Sheet warping is a common problem especially when welding thin sheets [31]. The warping problem was more serious at low heat input. We speculate warping is connected with the forward tool movement. When the heat input is low, the material showed bad plasticity, providing large resistance for tool movement, Figure 2: Cross section of the joint using shoulder plunge depth of easily causing sheet warping. ( ) ( ) ( ) 0mm a and the voids b and c . The results of Figures 2–4 show that sound joints can be obtained when a plunge depth of 0.1 mm is used. The the sheet during welding, resulting in weak friction joint formation of FSW is closely related to the material between the shoulder and the sheet. Rather weak mate- flow behavior during welding. Thus, the schematic of the rial flow behavior was induced. Only very small flash was material flow behavior in this work is shown in Figure 5. observed. Besides, the heat input under this condition Figure 5a shows the material flow behavior using the was not enough to guarantee sufficient material flow plunge depth of 0.1 mm. During welding, the plastic ma- behavior. Thus, voids were formed in the stir zone (SZ; terial of the BM flows under the stirring action of the tool. Figure 2b and c). A small part of the material flows upward due to the Figure 3 shows the joint cross sections welded at plunge of the tool shoulder, forming flash. A large part 0.1 mm plunge depth and at different rotating speeds. of the material flows toward the joint center due to the The cross section presented a typical basin-like mor- collection effect of the shoulder, which is marked using phology similar to other typical FSW joints [28,29]. red arrows in Figure 5a. At the same time, the material No defects were observed, illustrating that sound joints flows along the direction of tool rotation and also flows could be attained at a relatively board range.