Measurement and simulation of thermal-induced residual stresses within friction stir lapped Al/steel plate

Abstract

Welding residual stress and distortion usually affect the assembly accuracy, product performance, and service life, with no exception for the Al/steel hybrid structure. The lapped joint of 5052 Al alloy and DP590 steel was made by friction stir welding (FSW) at various rotation speeds. A subsequentially coupled computational modeling approach based on the in-house software JWRIAN combining an efficient hybrid solution method was developed to predict the temperature field, the residual stress distribution and the warpage deformation. Based on the simulation, a higher welding temperature with subsequently a higher average cooling rate was created at a high rotation velocity, leading to the area extension of the longitudinal tensile stress and transverse compressive stress near the weld zone. The thermal expansion coefficient mismatch leads to the mirroring distribution of the near interfacial residual stress on both sides, particularly for transverse residual stress. With the increasing rotation speed, the longitudinal residual stress on the steel side near the interface was changed from compressive to the tensile state. The maximum warpage deformation in the Al plate border became larger at a higher rotation speed. The surface residual stress was measured by X-ray diffusion method and the internal residual stress was reconstructed by the contour method with the aid of elastic FE analysis. The comparisons of temperature history, residual stress and deformation indicated satisfactory agreements between simulation and experiment ones.