Comparison of friction stir welding heat transfer analysis methods and parametric study on unspecified input variables

A three-dimensional numerical model was constructed to analyze the heat transfer of friction stir welding using Fluent and ANSYS multi-physics. The analysis result was used to calculate welding deformation and residual stress. Before the numerical simulation, several simplifying assumptions were applied to the model. Three different methods of heat transfer analysis were employed, and several assumptions were applied to each heat source model. In this work, several parametric studies were performed for certain unspecified variables. The calculated temperature data were compared with experimental data from relevant studies [19-21]. Additionally, the advantages and disadvantages of the three heat transfer analysis methods were compared.