The application of Friction Stir Welding Processes to new materials and new material combinations.
Evans, William Todd
:
2018-04-06
Abstract
The application of Friction Stir Welding Processes to new materials
and new material combinations.
Design and manufacturing needs in all industrial fields are driving the development of new manufacturing processes and new materials. Friction Stir Welding(FSW) is one such process that has added new ways to join materials that have been difficult or impossible to weld by traditional means. FSW is a solid state welding process that is only about three decades old, so research continues to understand, optimize, and expand the process to new applications and new materials. FSW has been used extensively to join aluminum alloys, but it is now being successfully applied to many other materials such as steel, copper, magnesium, and titanium. More research is needed to continue to expand FSW processes to new materials and new material combinations. This research aims to contribute to field of FSW by accomplishing three major goals: (1) Determine the effectiveness of using Friction Stir Welding to weld an additively manufactured aluminum alloy, (2) Explore the ability to use Friction Stir Welding processes to join an iron meteorite to itself for in-space manufacture, and (3) Apply Friction Stir Welding and its related processes to join dissimilar materials.