J. Mater. Sci. Technol., 2011, 27(7), 647-652.

Friction Stir Welding of Al Alloy Thin Plate by Rotational Tool without Pin
Liguo Zhang1,3) , Shude Ji1) , Guohong Luan2) , Chunlin Dong2) and Li Fu4)
1) 2) 3) 4) School of Aerospace Engineering, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, China China FSW Center, Beijing 100024, China Shenyang Aircraft Design & Research Institute, Shenyang 110035, China State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi an Jiaotong University, Xi an 710049, China
[Manuscript received October 22, 2010, in revised form April 11, 2011]

For friction stir welding (FSW), a new idea is put forward in this paper to weld the thin plate of Al alloy by using the rotational tool without pin. The experiments of FSW are carried out by using the tools with inner-concave-ute shoulder, concentric-circles ute shoulder and three-spiral-ute shoulder, respectively. The experimental results show that the grain size in weld nugget zone attained by the tool with three-spiralute shoulder is nearly the same while the grain sizes decrease with the decrease of welding velocity. The displacement of material ow in the heat-mechanical aected zone by the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder is much larger than that by the tool with inner-concave-ute shoulder or concentric-circlesute shoulder. The above-mentioned results are veried by numerical simulation. For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the tensile strength of FSW joint increases with the decrease of welding velocity while the value of tensile strength attained by the welding velocity of 20 mm/min and the rotation speed of 1800 r/min is about 398 MPa, which is 80% more than that of parent mental tensile strength. Those verify that the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder can be used to join the thin plate of Al alloy. KEY WORDS: Friction stir welding; Rotational tool without pin; Shoulder shape; Plastic ow

1. Introduction As a new solid-state joining technology, friction stir welding (FSW) owns many advantages, such as low stress, small distortion, no fusion welding defects, etc[14] . Because the metal of weldment isn t melted during FSW, the material ow in weld of FSW is the key factor to inuence the quality of weld. In order to thoroughly understand the mechanism of FSW, many researchers have made lots of scientic work on the metal plastic ow of weld in FSW[57] . Several methods on material ow have been published, including the steel ball tracing technology[8] , the stop-action technology[9] , the metallography method[10,11] , the marker material method[12] and the numerical simulation method[1315] . Guerra et al [11] showed that the mate Corresponding author. Ph.D.; Tel.:+86 24 86398270; E-mail address: superjsd@163.com (S.D. Ji).

rial on the retreating front side is entrained and lled in the retreating side of the rotational tool. Ke et al.[12] used the thin copper as maker materials to study the material ow in the thickness of weld and then put forward the sucking-extruding theory. Zhang et al.[14] analyzed the eect of welding parameters on the ow behavior of metal in weld by FE method. For FSW, the tunnel defect and the hole defect may result from the pin of rotational tool when the welding parameters aren t reasonable. Therefore, using the rotational tool without pin can avoid the appearance of the tunnel defects or the hole defects. However, the researches on the tool without pin are relatively few. Tozakia et al.[16] developed a new tool without pin for the friction stir spot welding. During FSW, the serious metal ow lies in the contact region of weldment with rotational tool shoulder[17,18] . Therefore, the rotational tool without pin may be used to join the thin plate of Al alloy. In this paper, the experiments of FSW of 2024-T3 Al alloy are car-

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Fig. 1 Rotational tools used in friction stir welding: (a) inner-concave-ute shoulder; (b) concentric-circles-ute shoulder; (c) three-spiral-ute shoulder Table 1 Welding schemes Specimen No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Shoulder shape inner-concave inner-concave concentric-circles concentric-circles three-spiral three-spiral Welding velocity/(m/min) 50 20 50 20 50 20 Rotation speed/(r/min) 1800 1800 1800 1800 1800 1800

ried out by using the rotational tool without pin. The eect of dierent tool shoulder shapes on the microstructure and the tensile strength are investigated while the shoulder shapes are inner-concaveute, concentric-circles ute and three-spiral-ute, respectively. The reason why the rotational tool with the three-spiral-ute shoulder can be used to join the thin plate of Al alloy is illustrated. 2. Experimental After the surface of 2024-T3 Al alloy with the thickness of 1.6 mm was simply burnished to wipe o the oxide layer, the butt joint conguration was jointed by the rotational tool without pin. During FSW, three types of tool shoulders were considered in this paper, namely, the tool with inner-concaveute shoulder, the tool with concentric-circlesute shoulder and the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder. The structure of rotational tool is shown in Fig. 1. The six kinds of experimental specimens attained by dierent tools or dierent welding parameters are discussed, as shown in Table 1. The specimens were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) after metallographic etching with Keller s reagent, while the type of SEM is KYKY-

2008B. The tensile tests were performed to evaluate the mechanical properties of FSW joints attained by using dierent rotational tools. The tensile tests were carried out at room temperature by using a universal tensile machine with initial strain rate of 103 s1 . In this paper, the intergranular corrosion test is carried out for the FSW joint by using the tool with threespiral-ute shoulder. And the corrosion solution is made up of 30 g NaCl, 10 ml HCl and 1 L H2 O. The corrosion time is 6 h while the solution temperature is about 35 . 3. Results and Discussion 3.1 Microstructure Figure 2 are the macro photos of the welded joints by using dierent rotation tools. In Fig. 2, the weld nugget zone, the thermo-mechanically aected zone (TMAZ) and the base metal of welded joint can be clearly distinguished. Moreover, the length of lack of penetration by the inner-concave-ute shoulder is more than that by the concentric-circles-ute shoulder while the lack of penetration doesn t exist in the welded joint by the three-spiral-ute shoulder (Fig. 2(c)). Figure 3 shows the microstructure in weld nugget

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Fig. 2 Macro photos of friction stir welding by dierent rotational tools: (a) inner-concave-ute shoulder; (b) concentric-circles-ute shoulder; (c) threespiral-ute shoulder

zone of FSW joint attained by three types of rotational tool. The welding velocity (v) is 50 mm/min while the rotation speed of tool () is 1800 r/min. It is seen that the grain size in weld nugget zone is dierent for the joints attained by using dierent rotational tool. For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the grain sizes in weld nugget zone are nearly the same, which veries that the plastic ow of metal during FSW is enough. For the tool with inner-concave-ute shoulder or with concentric-circles-ute shoulder, the grain sizes are dierent in dierent regions of weld nugget zone and the lath-like microstructures similar to microstructures in the parent metal appear in some region of weld nugget zone. The microstructure of parent metal is shown in Fig. 4. To verify the experimental results of microstructure, the numerical simulation by the software DEFORM was carried out to investigate the eect of different rotational tools without pin on the plastic ow of material in FSW joint. Figure 5 is the simulation result of plastic ow of material when the plunging depth of rotational tool is 0.14 mm. In the gure, the arrow direction represents the ow direction of material. It can be seen that the plastic ow of material in the weld and the surrounding area attained by the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder is much better than that by the tool with inner-concave-ute shoulder or with concentric-circles -ute shoulder. Moreover, by analyzing the ow direction of material, it is known that the material in the weld and the surrounding area adequately mixes during FSW (Fig. 5(c)). For the pure metal, the relation between the temperature of recrystallization (TR ) and the melting point (Tm ) is as follows: TR 0.4Tm . Although the recrystallization temperature heightens with the increase of the alloy s content, the value must be smaller

Fig. 3 Microstructure in weld nugget zone of FSW by using dierent rotational tools: (a) inner-concaveute shoulder; (b) concentric-circles-ute shoulder; (c) three-spiral-ute shoulder

Fig. 4 Microstructure of parent metal

than the welding temperature of FSW (about 70% of parent metal s melting point). Therefore, the dynamic recrystallization (DRX) must take place during FSW[19] . In fact, DRX is related with the material s

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Fig. 6 Eect of welding velocity on microstructure in weld nugget zone of FSW by rotational tool with the three-spiral-ute shoulder: (a) v=20 mm/min and =1800 r/min; (b) v=50 mm/min and =1800 r/min

Fig. 5 Simulation results of plastic metal s ow at the plunging depth of 0.14 mm: (a) tool with innerconcave-ute shoulder; (b) tool with concentriccircles-ute shoulder; (c) tool with three-spiralute shoulder

strain and strain rate. With the increase of the strain and the strain rate, the dislocation density of grain rapidly increases, which makes DRX happen more easily. During FSW, the more acute the plastic ow of material, the more easily DRX happens[20] . The plastic ow of metal during FSW also greatly aects the dimensions and the sizes of grains. Therefore, the simulation results (in Fig. 5) explain the experimental results of microstructure (in Fig. 3). For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the eect of welding velocity on microstructure in weld nugget zone of FSW joint is shown in Fig. 6. It is known from Fig. 6 that the grain size decreases with the decrease of welding velocity. During FSW, the revolutions of rotational tool in a second

increases with the decrease of welding velocity, which can result in the increase of welding temperature, improve the plastic ow of metal and make the size of grain less[21,22] . The microstructure near the heat-mechanical affected zone is shown in Fig. 7. For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the displacement of metal material in the heat-mechanical aected zone is relatively large while the transfer direction is from the bottom of specimen to the top (Fig. 7(c)). For the tool with inner-concave-ute shoulder or with concentric-circles -ute shoulder, the material in the heat-mechanical aected zone doesn t almost transfer (Fig. 7(a) and (b)). During FSW, the rotational tool doesn t directly touch the material in heat-mechanical aected zone, so the material transfer only results from the material ow in weld nugget zone. Therefore, the results in Fig.5 shows that material ow during FSW using the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder is much better than that using the other two types of tools. 3.2 Tensile strength The experimental results of tensile strength are shown in Table 2. The tensile strength of 2024-T3 at room temperature is 485 MPa. When the welding parameters are the same, the tensile strength of FSW joint attained by tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder

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Table 2 Results of tensile experiment of FSW joints Specimen No. 2 4 5 6 Rotational tool shape inner-concave concentric-circles three-spiral three-spiral Welding velocity/(mm/min) 20 20 50 20 Tensile strength/MPa 80.7 265.5 151.2 398.7

Fig. 8 Experimental result of intergranular corrosion of FSW joint attained by tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder

tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder. 3.3 Intergranular corrosion The microstructure of specimen 6 after corrosion is shown in Fig. 8. Thereinto, the declining black region in the gure is the marker for easily distinguishing between the weld nugget zone and the heat-mechanical aected zone. It is known from the gure that no obvious grain boundary appears in the weld and the surrounding area after corrosion, which veries that the intergranular corrosion phenomenon doesn t happens in FSW joint attained by the tool with three-spiral -ute shoulder. Moreover, the corrosion resistance of heat-mechanical aected zone is lower than that of weld nugget zone, which results from the dierence of grain sizes (Fig. 6 and Fig. 7(c)).
Fig. 7 Microstructure near boundary between the weld nugget zone and heat-mechanics aected zone when =50 mm/min and =1800 r/min: (a) inner-concave-ute shoulder; (b) concentriccircles-ute shoulder; (c) three-spiral-ute shoulder

4. Conclusions (1) The microstructure of FSW joint attained by using the rotational tools without pin is investigated and the shoulders of tool are inner-concaveute, concentric -circles-ute and three-spiral-ute, respectively. The results show that the degree of uniformity of grains in weld nugget zone attained by the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder is much better than that by the tool with inner-concave-ute shoulder or concentric-circles-ute shoulder. For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the material in the heat-mechanically aected zone undergoes relatively big plastic transfer while transfer direction is from the bottom of plate to the top. (2) By using the no-pin rotational tool with three-

is the highest while the tensile strength of joint attained by with inner-concave-ute shoulder is the lowest. For the tool with three-spiral-ute shoulder, the tensile strength of joint increases with the decrease of welding velocity and the value of tensile strength can reaches more than 80 percent of parent metal s tensile strength. Integrating the experimental result of microstructure, it is known that the thin plate of Al alloy can be well jointed by FSW using the no-pin

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spiral-ute shoulder, 2024-T3 Al alloy plates of 1.6 mm in thickness can be well jointed. At the welding velocity of 20 mm/min and the rotation speed of 1800 r/min, the corrosion resistance of weld nugget zone is very excellent while the tensile strength of welded joint is 80% more than that of parent mental tensile strength.
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