Friction stir welding of 2024-T3 aluminium alloy sheet with sheet pre-heating

Friction stir welding is one of the most modern methods of joining metals and their alloys in the solid state.Ensuring the stability of working parameters requires a determination of the optimal welding parameters such as the rotational speed of the tool and the feed rate.This article presents the results of tests on welding of 1-mm-thick 2024-T3 aluminium sheet metal conducted in accordance with a PS/DK3 2 test plan.The welding tests were conducted on a universal milling machine, and the static strength tests were conducted on a static tensile-testing machine.In order to decrease the deformation of the joined sheets, some welding trials were also conducted with initial heating of the sheet metal.Therefore, a special fixture with a heated bed was developed.The tests show that the pre-heating of thin sheets that are friction stir welded leads to a reduction in the deformation size of the joined sheets.It was found that the smallest deformation of the joined sheets was observed in the case of joining sheets heated up to a temperature of 200 °C.Pre-heating of the joined sheets decreased the size of the deformations by 57.62 %.