Microstructure and mechanical properties of GMAW cladded AA 6063 using friction stir processing as a post-processing technique

Aluminum alloy being a significant material for many industries, and due to its favourable properties like low density and the high strength-to-weight ratio, is used for cladding. But because of low wear resistance, non-uniform grain structure, and other certain insufficiencies, Friction stir processing (FSP) was applied over the cladded part to overcome these deficits and drawbacks and improve the mechanical characteristics of the produced component further. In this work, mechanical and microstructural characteristics were investigated and analysed by varying rotational speed and number of passes at the time FSP. After FSP finer grains were found, and other solidification defects were eliminated from the final components. Processed part shows the increment in tensile strength, the hardness of the component increases while erosive wear decreases with the number of passes. Maximum hardness and minimum erosion wear rate for all three passes were attained at 598 RPM. Tensile strength and percentage elongation have been found to be highest at three passes at 938 RPM. Microstructure also reflects the finer grains at the highest RPM at the third pass. Also, modern quality management tools and process improvement technique like ANOVA was utilised to formulate the mathematical model and to study the relationship between the input and output of the process.