Strains and strain rates during friction stir welding

Strains experienced by materials during friction stir welding (FSW) are important but scarce in the literature. Here we report the computed strains and strain rates during FSW of AA2524 from a three-dimensional coupled viscoplastic flow and heat transfer model. The strain rates are integrated along a streamline to estimate the accumulated strains experienced by the material. The computed strains and strain rates were in the ranges -10 to 5 and -9 to 9 s(-1), respectively. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.