Model development for numerical analysis of the bonding strength for friction welded lightweight structures

The rotary friction welding (RFW) is a robust, precise, productive and economical joining process that is used in many areas of mechanical engineering to produce lightweight structures consisting of combinations of ferrous and non-ferrous materials, for instance aluminium alloy and steel. Crucial for the design of such lightweight structures is the knowledge about the bonding strength. The bonding strength is the result of the bond formation depending on the present transient kinematic, kinetic and thermal states during the welding process being directly determined by the welding process parameters. Despite several years of empirical research, no reliable numerical modelling approach exists for the RFW process to analyse the bonding strength based on these transient state variables. For this reason, an improvement of the bond formation and therefore an increase in the bonding strength can only be tested experimentally. The main motivation of this paper is to develop an appropriate modelling approach for the estimation of the bonding strength for friction welded lightweight structures manufactured of an aluminium alloy and a structural steel. Therefore, a couple of aluminium alloy and steel welding experiments with different process parameters were performed and subsequently analysed concerning to the resulting bonding strength. Moreover, all the welding experiments were simulated in regard to the corresponding welding process in order to determine the present kinematic, kinetic and thermal state variables, like the strain rate, the stress and the temperature. Thus, a model for the characterization of the bond formation can be developed, which allows a correlation between the bond formation and the resulting bond strength based on the chosen welding process parameters. Finally, the model will be examined and discussed in terms of its plausibility and applicability.