Thermal modeling of friction stir welding in a moving coordinate system and its validation

A three-dimensional heat transfer model for friction stir welding (FSW) is presented in this paper; a moving coordinate is introduced to reduce the difficulty of modeling the moving tool. Heat input from the tool shoulder and the tool pin are considered in the model. The finite difference method was applied in solving the control equations. A non-uniform grid mesh is generated for the calculation. FSW experiments have been done to validate the calculated results. The calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental results. The calculation result also shows that preheat to the workpiece is beneficial to FSW. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.