NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FRICTION STIR WELDING OF ALUMINIUM PLATE

Abstract

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is one of the most effective solid state joining processes and has numerous potential applications in many industries. The aim of this paper is to describe the thermal-fluid and mechanical simulation of FSW using the finite element method in program SYSWELD. The simulation of FSW process requires the modelling of the complex interaction between thermal, metallurgical and mechanical phenomena. Thermal-mechanical results from the numerical simulation using SYSWELD are here presented for aluminium alloy.