Mechanical evaluation and thermal modelling of friction welding of mild steel and aluminium

In friction welding of two dissimilar materials, two rods are welded together by holding one of them still while rotating the other under the influence of an axial load which creates frictional heat in the interface. In this study, mechanical properties of mild steel and aluminium welded rods were evaluated to understand the thermal effects, and an explicit one-dimensional finite difference method was used to approximate the heating and cooling temperature distribution of the joint. The thermal effects of the friction welding were observed to have lowered the welded materials hardness compared to the parent materials. The tensile strength of the welded rods is lower than the parent rods due to incomplete welding. The preliminary predictions were compared to actual thermocouple data from welds conducted under identical conditions and were shown to be in fair agreement. The finite difference method proposed in this work will provide guidance in weld parameter development and will allow better understanding of the friction welding process. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.