Effects of tool pin profile on tensile and wear behaviour of friction stir welded AA6101-T6 and AA1350 alloys

In Friction Stir Welding (FSW) technique, hard rotating tool with specially profiled pin is plunged into base metals and traversed along the interface of the plates, generating the frictional heat and plasticizing the base metals. This leads to flow of materials and makes solid state joint. AA6101-T6 and AA1350 alloys are widely applied in electrical bus bars, because of their high electrical conductivity. In this present work, these two alloys are joined by varying the pin profile of the tools as circular, triangular, square and hexagonal. Of these four joints, the joint fabricated by circular pin profiled tool exhibits poor tensile and wear properties whereas hexagonal pin profiled tool exhibits better tensile and wear properties. This is due to the volume defects and grain refinement at stirred zone.