ABSTRACT

Friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is a new process that recently has received considerable attention from the automotive and other industries. A novel variant of the linear friction stir welding (FSW) process, FSSW creates a spot, lap-weld without bulk melting. The appearance of the resulting weld resembles that of a resistance spot weld commonly used for auto-body assembly. The solid state bonding and other features of the process makes it inherently attractive for body assembly and other similar applications. Todays primary welding process for auto body structure assembly the electric resistance spot welding (RSW) process can be problematic for many new high performance light weight structural materials such as Aluminium alloys. Currently there is limited data on the mechanical properties and microstructure of friction stir spot welded Aluminium. Thus our current aim is to investigate how these parameters change as a function of some critical process variables. In this investigation, spot welding of 3 mm thick Aluminium IS 19000/ AA 1100 plate was done using a 5.9 mm pin length using Molybdenum Series High Speed Steel tool. Different combination of rotational speeds of 380 rpm, 510 rpm and 675 rpm were then applied to study the effect on the tensile properties, Micro hardness, Microstructure and Macrostructure of the spot weld.