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An Exhaustive Evaluation of Fracture Toughness, Microstructure, and Mechanical Characteristics of Friction Stir Welded Al6061 Alloy and Parameter Model Fitting Using Response Surface Methodology

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Abstract

This paper aims at investigating how fracture toughness and other mechanical and microstructural properties of two 2mm-thicked Al 6061 sheets are evolving under different FS-Welding conditions. Hence, three principal FSW parameters, including pin geometry, welding, and rotating speeds, each changing in three levels, have been chosen. Therefore, the number of corresponding trials was reduced from 27 to 9 by employing L9 Taguchi orthogonal array. Besides utilizing Digital Image Correlation to study the fracture toughness of the FS-Welded specimens for more accuracy, samples’ microstructure, including their grain size, was also examined under an optical microscope. It has been concluded that higher rates of rotational speed to welding speed lead to coarser and larger grains and confirmed welded samples’ weak or strong performance. In terms of Vickers micro-hardness and ultimate tensile strength, while results show the positive effect of the welding speed, the rotational speed negatively impacts values. Results have also revealed that the highest DIC-aided measured fracture toughness has belonged to the weld conducted using a square-shaped pin, having welding and rotating speeds of 80mm/min and 1600 RPM, respectively. Finally, correlations between input and output variables have been achieved in regression equations, utilizing response surface methodology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automotive Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Mina Ahmadi, Mostafa Pahlavani & Javad Marzbanrad

  2. Department of Research and Development, MAPNA Rail Technologies Company (MRT), Karaj, Iran

    Mostafa Pahlavani

  3. School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Davood Rahmatabadi & Ramin Hashemi

  4. Faculty of Electrical, Mechanical and Construction Engineering, Department of Automotive Engineering, Standard Research Institute (SRI), Karaj, Iran

    Amir Afkar

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  1. Mina Ahmadi
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  2. Mostafa Pahlavani
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  3. Davood Rahmatabadi
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  4. Javad Marzbanrad
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  5. Ramin Hashemi
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Correspondence to Javad Marzbanrad.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 10 .

Table 10 Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results for the correlation of the studied responses
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Ahmadi, M., Pahlavani, M., Rahmatabadi, D. et al. An Exhaustive Evaluation of Fracture Toughness, Microstructure, and Mechanical Characteristics of Friction Stir Welded Al6061 Alloy and Parameter Model Fitting Using Response Surface Methodology. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 31, 3418–3436 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-021-06461-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-021-06461-1

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