Abstract
Friction Stir Processing (FSP) can be used to locally modify properties in materials such as aluminium. This may be used, for example, to produce a fine microstructure or to integrate secondary elements into the base material. The purpose of this work is to examine the effect of the properties of the metal additives on the resulting material distribution in the processed region. For this, commercially pure iron and copper were integrated into an EN AW-1050 aluminium base material using FSP. Iron in the form of powder, wire and foil as well as copper in powder form were assessed. The various additive forms represent materials with differing surface-to-volume ratios as well as varying dispersion characteristics in the processing zone. The processing parameters for each additive form remained constant; however, two- and four-pass FSP processes were conducted. The results of CT analysis proved especially insightful regarding the spatial distribution of the various additive form within the workpiece. As expected, the powder additive was most widely distributed within the welding zone. Micro-hardness mappings showed that the powder additive contributed to the hardness within the weld nugget in comparison to the processed material without secondary elements.
Highlights
Introduction and motivation Friction StirProcessing (FSP) is an offshoot of Friction Stir Welding (FSW) and is used to create a locally refined microstructure in metal materials, most commonly aluminium
Comparison of the initial additive geometry with iron components (Trial A) The Computed tomography (CT) images, shown in Figure 3, provide information that cannot be extracted from optical images: most importantly, the distribution of the additive along the processing line
It is unclear whether the pattern of powder distribution along the welding line is a result of the probe profile or due to an inhomogeneous distribution during set-up
Summary
Processing (FSP) is an offshoot of Friction Stir Welding (FSW) and is used to create a locally refined microstructure in metal materials, most commonly aluminium. During the plunge phase and processing, the material is softened due to the heat generated by friction between the workpiece and tool. The microstructure of the area in which processing occurred can be divided into several zones (Figure 1b) [1]. In the nugget zone (NZ), through which the tool passes, intensive material deformation and dynamic recrystallization occurs.
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