Initial characterisation of mechanical and corrosion properties of stationary shoulder friction stir welded bare and Alclad AA2024-T3 butt joints

Aluminium alloy AA2024-T3 is a lightweight and damage tolerant material, and is therefore often used in aerospace applications. However, this alloy is difficult to weld using conventional fusion welding techniques due to defects caused by the meld pool.<br/> <br/>Friction stir welding (FSW) was developed by The Welding Institute (TWI) in 1991 in...

Contour Method with Uncertainty Quantification: A Robust and Optimised Framework via Gaussian Process Regression

Background: Over the past 20 years, the Contour Method (CM) has been extensively implemented to evaluate residual stress at the macro scale, especially in products where material processing is involved. Despite this, insufficient attention has been devoted to addressing the problems of input data filtering and residual stress uncertainties...

Local changes in the microstructure, mechanical and electrochemical properties of friction stir welded joints from aluminium of varying grain size

The present study shows results of friction stir welded (FSW) samples after different plastic deformation routes. The welds were made of coarse-grained and ultrafine-grained commercially pure aluminium. As a plastic deformation method a new hybrid process has been chosen, which resulted in obtaining samples with different characteristics of...

A novel approach to determine residual stress field during FSW of AZ91 Mg alloy using combined smoothed particle hydrodynamics/neuro-fuzzy computations and ultrasonic testing

The faults in welding design and process every so often yield defective parts during friction stir welding (FSW). The development of numerical approaches including the finite element method (FEM) provides a way to draw a process paradigm before any physical implementation. It is not practical to simulate all possible designs to identify the...

Localised Corrosion Studies on FSW Al-Li alloys: Microstructure Effect

Al-Li alloys were introduced for the use in aerospace applications due to its many advantages over steel such as its low density, good thermal and electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance of these alloys. The current generation of Al-Li alloys were developed to replace the currently used AA2024 alloy in commercial airframes, military and...

Research on the Applicability of Metal Foam Based Sandwich Materials for Friction Stir Welded Ship Structures with Sufficient Fatigue Life Time

Research to analyse and/or develop novel materials and techniques is necessary to address competition and safeguard craftmanship in shipbuilding. In this master thesis, two new approaches to reduce the production and maintenance costs are studied: {metal foam core, metal face sheet} sandwich materials and corner adstir fillet stationary shoulder...

Friction stir weld-bonding defect inspection using phased array ultrasonic testing

Weight reduction is an important driver of the aerospace industry, which encourages the development of lightweight joining techniques to substitute rivet joints. Friction stir welding (FSW) is a solid-state process that enables the production of lighter joints with a small performance reduction compared to the base material properties....

Friction Stir Welding effects of defects in Glare

Splicing technology is used to create fuselage panels due to the maximum width of the aluminium sheets of 60 inches as a result of the production process. A set of designing rules is required for the design of a spliced Glare fuselage resulting in a significant increase in complexity. Friction stir welding of the thin aluminium sheets in Glare...

Fatigue and Damage Tolerance of Friction Stir Welded Joints for Aerospace Applications

Friction stir welding is a young welding process with high potential to replace riveted joints in aerospace structures like the fuselage. Friction stir welding is a robust process and capable of welding high strength aluminum alloys. Therefore it can lead to both costs and weight savings. To substitute riveted joints by friction stir welded...