Numerical investigations of effect of input process parameters on heat generation in friction stir welding

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of input process parameters on the heat generation in friction stir welding (FSW) using numerical techniques. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based numerical modeling technique is used to predict the heat generation, temperature distributions with consideration of tool pin profile, tool rotation speed and welding speed. To investigate the effect input process parameters on heat generation and temperature distribution, four different tool pin profile are used namely cylindrical, conical, cylindrical-conical and stepped-conical pin profile. The geometric modeling and numerical simulation is carried out using ANSYS Fluent software. The peak temperature produced by tool pin profile is used to predict the effect of input process parameter on the heat generation. The simulation results show that the peak temperature value directly proportional to the tool rotation speed. The magnitude of peak temperature produced by stepped-conical pin profile tool is highest among the all tool pin profile peak temperature along the thickness. The effect of tool rotation speed on peak temperature is highly significant but welding speed effect on peak temperature is insignificant for all tool pin profile at particular tool rotation speed along the thickness of the work piece.