Numerical and Experimental Investigations of Heat Generation during Friction Stir Processing of Copper

Abstract

In this paper, numerical and experimental investigations of heat generation during friction stir processing (FSP) of pure copper were performed. FSP experiments with two different combinations of processing parameters were conducted. Temperature distributions were measured using two K-type thermocouples. Optical microscope (OM) micrographs revealed grain refinement depends strongly on the heat input during FSP. A three dimensional (3D), transient, non-linear thermal model was developed using ANSYS 11.0 software+ to simulate the thermal history during FSP of copper. The simulated temperature distributions (profile and peak temperature) were compared with experimental values. The results of the simulation are in good concurrence with that of experimental results. The results showed that the heat generation during FSP strongly depends on both rotational and transverse speed where the peak temperature was observed to be strong function of the rotational speed while the rate of heating was a strong function of the transverse speed. The peak temperature obtained was about 65% of the melting point of base metal.