Experimental investigation of bending and tensile strength of friction stir processed TIG-welded AA5083-H111 joint

Abstract

This paper reports on the experimental investigation of bending and tensile strength of the friction stir processed TIG-welded AA5083-H111 joint. The friction stir processed joint was studied comparatively with the TIG-welded joint (unprocessed joint). The TIG-welded joint was processed using a single-pass friction stir processing technique. The microstructural analysis revealed that the unprocessed joint was dominated with coarse grains while the refined grains dominated the friction stir processed joint. The unprocessed joint consistently failed at the center of the joint during tensile testing while the processed joint failed in different locations of the stir zone. The tensile strength of the unprocessed joint was found to be 47.4% to that of the base metal while that of the processed joint was found to be 76.5% to that of the base metal. The percentage elongation of the processed joint was found to be 82.4% to that of the base metal while that of the unprocessed joint was found to be 34.8% to that of the base metal. The bending failure mode of the processed and unprocessed joint was similar to that observed during tensile testing.