ANALYSE THE EFFECT OF FILLER MATERIAL ON THE TIG WELDED AA6082 ALUMINIUM ALLOY

Abstract

Aluminium alloys are widely used in industries like construction, automobile, spacecraft manufacturing due to its outstanding properties like high resistance to corrosion, high strength to weight ratio, machinability and ductility. This research aims to analyse the effect of filler material and finding suitable filler wire to weld similar AA6082 Aluminium alloy using GTAW process. A butt joint of similar AA6082 Aluminium Alloy has been produced using 3 different fillers e.g.: ER5356(Mg-rich), ER4043(Si-rich) and ER4047 (Si-rich) at different level of process parameters e.g.: Welding electric current, Diameter of filler wire and gas flow rate of shielding gas. Welding was done in single pass with argon as a shielding gas. Taguchi L9 orthogonal array technique for weld specimen with each filler wire was employed to perform the experiments to investigate the tensile strength. The size of samples was prepared as per the ASME Standard. Hardness test, Residual stress test and microstructure analysis of the optimized weld joints were also investigated. The results revealed that weld specimen with ER 5356 yields more tensile strength, hardness value and low residual stress in comparison to its counterpart’s weld specimen with ER4043 and ER4047. Microstructure analysis of all weld specimens reveals that weld zone consist of homogeneous distribution of silicon and aluminium. Better results were obtained with ER5356 as compared to ER4043 and ER4047.