Experimental investigation of mechanical and metallurgical properties for friction stir welded joints of aluminium alloys aa2024 and aa2099

Abstract

A country s economy is decided based on the amount and price of crude oil imported by them and hence it is found to be having an important role. The major consumers for petroleum products are the transportation and automobile industries. Modern researchers are keenly focused on the aspect of decreasing the fuel consumption via weight reduction and design improvement. Especially in the aircraft manufacturing industries, higher weight components are replaced by modern alloy materials for the benefit of high strength with lower weight. A study on the past literature revealed that there is almost a possibility to reduce the weight of aircrafts by 30% through the methods mentioned earlier. Hence suitable processes for making strong joints of lighter materials without affecting their mechanical properties are demanded. The Friction Stir Welding (FSW) process, one of solid state welding technique proved to be suitable for the need. FSW is typically used for joining metal plates with lesser disadvantages from porosity, cracking and strength almost equivalent to the base material. It also offers additional advantage of being eco-friendly (does not emits green gases like CO2. It is also economic by avoiding the cost involved in shielding the welded joint from atmosphere to avoid oxide formation as well as post weld cleaning process. One such an approach has been made on this study by making suitable weld joints for producing fuselage of aircrafts using aluminium alloys of AA2024 and AA2099. This research work is carried out in a manner of analysing similar weld joints of AA2024 and dissimilar weld joints of AA2024 and AA2099. The modern lithium based alloy AA2099 offers great load carrying capacity to the fuselage structure. A tool consisting of cylindrical pin was used to weld the workpiece material in a specially designed FSW setup. Rotational speed, traverser speed and axial load were considered as input parameters with various level values. newline