Experimental investigation and numerical analysis using Taguchi and ANOVA methods for underwater friction stir welding of aluminium alloy 2017 process improvement

The effect of under water friction stir welding for 5 mm AA2017 aluminum alloy plaque on mechanical prop-erties has been examined and optimized. Nine different tests were designed according to Taguchi orthogonal array without changing the welding tool. Three variable operating parameters (Welding velocity, rotational velocity and axial force) have been used with three levels for each parameter. The effects of each FSW parameters on the weld joint were discussed and analyzed, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is adopted to identify the contribution of each FSW underwater parameters. Moreover, the statistical Taguchi method (TM) was employed to pridect the optimal combination of welding parameters to improve the tensile properties such astensile strength (TS) of welded joints. In addition, the experimental tests show good agreement with that obtained by the proposed mathematical model. Wherethe obtained validation results confirm the robustness of the optimization method as a useful tool to improve the quality responses of underwater friction stir welding.