SIMULATION OF INERTIA FRICTION WELDING OF MILD STEEL AND ALUMINIUM 6061 USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD ON ABAQUS

Abstract

Friction welding is a welding technique involving green technology concept as it makes use of a non-consumable tool to produce coalescence between work-pieces by utilizing heat generated because of friction and plastic deformation at the interface of work-components affecting the formation of weld joint while the material being in solid state. Advantages of frictional welding process are low distortion of weld joint, absence of flash related defects and high strength of weld joints in those alloys and metals that are considered to be Non-Weldable by conventional fusion welding processes. Friction welding process is omitted of filler-induced defects as the inertia friction welding process requires no use of filler material and thus susceptible to hydrogen damage. The technique can be used to produce joints on equipments utilizing traditional machine technologies and it can be used to produce weld between varieties of similar and dissimilar metals and alloys and it can also be used for producing weld joint between metal reinforced composites. Use of friction welded joints leads to a significant reduction in weight and cost savings serving friction welding process as a reusable tool for industrial and manufacturing sectors. Apart from industrial and manufacturing level applications, inertia friction welding process finds its application in field of Navy, Medicinal applications. Friction welding process seems to be a simple process but this is not, instead it is a very complex process as it includes conversion of mechanical energy into thermal energy in form of heat due to frictional rubbing between work-pieces. So prediction of properties of weld formed at interface is difficult. Numerical simulation offers a way to tackle that problem and also a way to increase repeatability of the friction welding process at manufacturing level and also it opens new ways to understand the process’s mechanics more efficiently. This thesis works review an introduction toward the friction welding process, work that had been performed in corresponding field and research work needed to be done in the corresponding field on the basis of research gap in the corresponding field. This project works consists of performing inertia friction welding process between mild steel and aluminum 6061 using lathe machine and then performing numerical simulation of the inertia friction welding process using finite element method on ANSYS and ABAQUS and then performing comparison of the data obtained both experimentally and numerically so as to increase the repeatability of the inertia friction welding process.