Investigation of mechanical properties and microstructure characteristics on ultrasonic metal welding of aluminum alloy 8011 sheets

Abstract

The non-traditional machining processes are widely used to manufacture geometrically complex and precision parts for the aerospace, electronics, and automotive industries. In which, the ultrasonic welding technique can be used for welding various materials ranging from metals to non-metals and composites with minimum processing time and cost. The present work is to understand the workings of the ultrasonic metal welding process as well as to determine the best welding parameters, such as weld pressure and time for three different thicknesses aluminum sheets using the design of experiment approach. Based on the experimental design, a series of experiments are conducted using L27 orthogonal array and a data collection system tensile testing equipment was used to compute the weld strength for each specimen. The highest weld strength of thickness 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 mm are 98.2 MPa, 98.38 MPa, and 90.23 MPa respectively. Also, the relation between weld strength and grain area is observed using microstructural analysis. Grain area often decreases as weld strength increases. The coefficient of multiple determination is used to validate the findings of experimental work, and it shows that the results are good.