Friction Stir Welding

Supervisor(s):

Dr. Hanady Salem
Dr. Hatem el Ayat

Team Members:

Hisham el Abd
Islam Abdel ghany
Michael Bushra
Mohamed Elfatih
Sherif Masoud

Objectives:

Introduce the process of FSW in Egypt for the first time in order to allow either researcher scholars at AUC, research scholars at other universities in Egypt or the Egyptian industry sector to start exploring and benefiting from this new welding technique.

The objectives of the project also include:
" Adopt FSW to a milling machine.
" Design the FSW tool, select its material and have it manufactured.
" Design the required clamping system.
" Apply FSW to plates of an alloy that is not readily weldable by conventional methods.
" Investigate FSW parameters (RPM and Feed Rate).
" Analyze conventionally welded and friction stir welded sections then compare their properties.

Achievements:

In this project, the problems associated with the conventional welding processes were reviewed and the solution was identified to be FSW. The process of FWS was covered in detail in order to show the advantages of this relatively new solid-state welding technique. The implementation approach for adopting FSW to a milling machine and evaluate the quality of weldments was presented. The automatic milling machine of the AUC mechanical workshop was selected to perform FSW to weld wrought aluminum alloy sheets in order to investigate the FSW parameters, such as the feed rate and RPM. The possible workpiece dimensions depend on the milling machine workable dimensions. Also, the quality of welded specimens will be analyzed by conducting micro-hardness tests, tensile tests, and micro-structural examination.