Journal of Welding Science

The aim of this study was to evaluate the mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of friction stir welding (FSW) connection of A517 (B) steel plate. Mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of weld zone were evaluated after reaching to optimum FSW microstructure with the lowest martensite phase. Thus, after the identifying phase microstructure by SEM and XRD analysis, mechanical properties were analyzed by micro-hardness and tensile test. Micro hardness data shows slight increases in stir zone (SZ) compared with the base metal (BM); although a reduction of about 17% in hardness of heat-affected zone (HAZ) was sensible. Reduction of hardness in the HAZ was appeared as drop by about 12 percent of the yield strength and 19 percent of ultimate strength compared with BM. SEM images from fracture surface of the tensile sample showed bi-modal distribution of large and small Dimples being sings of softness of HAZ .Comparing corrosion behavior in solution consist of 3.5 wt% of NaCl showed that there was no passive layers to prevent dissolution of the metal in the SZ and BM. while BM and SZ had fairly similar corrosion rates, Difference of 50 mV between corrosion potential of SZ and BM showed that in galvanic condition, corrosion resistance of BM could be lower than SZ.

Studies on welding process of Aluminium weldments shows that post-weld residual stress and deformation are influential on structure efficiency and there are different variable which affect these stresses and deformation. In this study the effect of geometrical variables and welding sequence on residual stresses and deformation in Aluminium H321 have investigated by the finite element software Ansys. Thermo elastic-plastic model was verified by metallography experiment and measurement of post-weld deformation afterward, weld leg, penetration depth and welding sequence were optimized to minimize the distortion. It was concluded that weld-volume increase post-weld distortion and it can be minimize by choosing an appropriate weld sequence