Effects of Underwater Friction Stir Welding Heat Generation on Residual Stress of AA6068-T6 Aluminum Alloy

Abstract

This article aims to study water-cooling effects on residual stress friction stir welding (FSW) of AA6068-T6 aluminum alloy. For this reason, the FSW and submerged FSW processes are simulated by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) method to study heat generation. The increment hole drilling technique was used to measure the residual stress of welded samples. The simulation results show that materials softening during the FSW process are more than submerged. This phenomenon caused the residual stress of the joint line in the submerged case to be lower than in the regular FSW joint. On the other hand, the results revealed that the maximum residual stresses in both cases are below the yielding strength of the AA6068-T6 aluminum alloy. The results indicated that the residual stress along the longitudinal direction of the joint line is much larger than the transverse direction in both samples.