Effect of Traverse/Rotational Speed on Material Deformations and Temperature Distributions in Friction Stir Welding

A fully coupled thermo-mechanical model was developed to study the temperature fields and the plastic deformations of alloy AL6061-T6 under different process parameters during the friction stir welding (FSW) process.Three-dimensional results under different process parameters were presented.Results indicate that the maximum temperature is lower than the melting point of the welding material.The higher temperature gradient occurs in the leading side of the workpiece.The calculated temperature field can be fitted well with the one from the experimental test.A lower plastic strain region can be found near the welding tool in the trailing side on the bottom surface,which is formed by the specific material flow patterns in FSW.The maximum temperature can be increased with increasing the welding speed and the angular velocity in the current numerical modelling.