A Study on Friction Stir Welding Process for AA2219/AA2195 Joints

The object of this study was to study mechanical properties of friction stir welded joints of AA2219 and AA2195. AA2219 has been used as an aerospace materials for many years primarily due to its high weldability and high specific strength in addition to the excellent cryogenic property so to be successfully used for manufacturing of cryogenic fuel tank for space launcher. Relatively new Aluminum-Lithium alloy, AA2195 provides significant saving on weight and manufacturing cost with application of friction stir welding. Friction stir welding is a solid-state joining process, which use a spinning tool to produce frictional heat in the work piece. To investigate the effect of the rotation direction of the tool, the joining was performed by switching the positions of the two dissimilar alloys. The welding parameters include the travelling speed, rotation speed and rotation direction of the tool, and the experiment was conducted under the condition that the travelling speed of the tool was 120-300 mm/min and the rotation speed of the tool was 400-800 rpm. Tensile tests were conducted to study the strength of friction stir welded joints and microhardness were measured with microstructural analysis. The results indicate the failure occurred in the relatively weaker TMAZ/HAZ interface of AA2219. The optimum process condition was obtained at the rotation speed of 600-800 rpm and the travelling speed of 180-240 mm/min.