INVESTIGATION ON THE THERMAL BEHAVIOR OF FRICTION STUD WELDING OF DISSIMILAR ALUMINUM/MILD STEEL JOINTS

Friction stud welding process is a suitable candidate in joining stud fasteners for steel structure buildings, military vehicles, automobiles, aircraft, ocean liners, bridges, ship buildings, etc., The peak temperature for welding is achieved by converting mechanical energy to thermal energy at the sample interface without the use of electric energy from other sources because it is a solid-state process. The study of the thermal behavior of different metals during friction stud welding is very important since it is a thermal energy process. However, there is no good thermal model for the friction stud welding process. In this work, the generation of heat flux at the interfacial area of two distinct metals, namely aluminum and mild steel, is calculated using a mathematical model. The temperature at the interfacial region, which plays a significant role in the quality and strength of the weld component, is particularly focused on experimentation and analytical modeling. In the experimentation, a noncontact type infrared thermometer is used to measure temperature directly. The temperature profile was determined by the finite difference method based on thermal resistance and capacitance formulation at transient conditions. The obtained mathematical results are compared with the experimental results at the distance of 5 and 10 mm from the welded interface. The computed temperature profile is in good agreement with the experimental data on the heating side and with a minimum degree of deviation in the cooling part. The maximum percentage of error for the 5 mm interface is 3.349 and for the 10 mm interface is 2.857. This deviation is due to the zeroaxial shortening assumption in the analytical model. Besides, the temperature characteristics of the welded are analyzed at various time increments by numerical simulation. As a result, the predicted temperature is more on the aluminum side compared to the mild steel due to a change in thermal properties. This proposed thermal model would be helpful to improve the design and manufacture of welding machines.

Automated summary

The friction stud welding process, which converts mechanical energy to thermal energy at the interface of metals, is suitable for joining stud fasteners in various steel structure buildings and transportation equipment. However, there is currently no good thermal model for this process. In this study, a mathematical model is proposed and validated through experiments and numerical simulations, providing helpful insights for the design and manufacture of welding machines.