PREDICTION OF TENSILE STRENGTH BEHAVIOR OF AA2024 REINFORCED WITH CNT IN THE COMBINATION OF FSW+FSP

Abstract

Friction stir welding (FSW) is a solid-state welding procedure that is fast becoming the standard within the manufacturing industry. It is a process that can produce welds of utmost quality and durability in hard-to-weld materials such as alloys of Aluminum and Copper. It has potential applications in some of the most demanding and varied industries, such as aerospace, the military, robotics as well as trains, and ever computer hardware. FSW also has the extraordinary advantages of being one of the very few fabricators that can weld a wide range of materials with sufficient strength at an economical cost. These welds also offer an unmatched, environmentally harmless solution to tackle these problems faced by the traditional and outdated industry. Friction stir processing (FSP) is on the FastTrack to becoming the industry’s most dependable and widely used methods of fabrication. Over the past 10-15 years many researchers have subsequently studied this process and made various changes and alterations in the material used for reinforcement as well as the quantity of material used. FSP also has the added precedence of severely decreasing distortion and also defects in materials. FSP was combined with FSW due to its ability to achieve a better Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) and superior hardness in the weld area. This process has been used time and again to weld Aluminum alloys because of its superior and less distorted welds with excellent HAZ properties. The Aluminum 2024 base metal plate was successfully conjoined using the reinforcement material: Multi-Walled Carbon Nano Tubes(MWCNT). During the Tensile tests, the strength was found to be around 476 MPa, without FSW or FSP. After FSW, the optimum joining strength was found to be about 780 MPa, signaling an increase in the strength of the plates. The optimized values for CNT, rotation speed, feed rate, and tilt angle were found to be 2mm depth of the groove, 900 RPM, 60 mm/min, and 1-degree tilt angle.