ACCURATE 3D FRICTION STIR WELDING SIMULATION TOOL BASED ON FRICTION MODEL CALIBRATION

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is one of the most effective solid states joining process and has numerous potential applications in many industries. A FSW numerical tool, based on Forge (R) F. E software, has been developed. Its main features are an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation and an adaptive remeshing procedure based on error estimation. A 3D FSW simulation based on friction models calibration has been presented using Eulerian and ALE formulation. Two friction models have been studied to model friction in the tool-plate interface in aluminium alloy 6061-T6: Norton's and Coulomb's. Comparisons with experimental results considering various travel speed has been performed.