OPTIMIZING THE PROCESS PARAMETERS IN FRICTION CRUSH WELDING OF ALUMINUM ALLOY 6061-T6 BY TAGUCHI METHOD by Ajay Singh Jamwal
Abstract
Aluminum 6061 T-6 is one of the alloys of aluminum which is extensively used in aerospace industries and has a wide application in this modern age of industries such as in ship-building and defense sector. Friction crush welding (FCW) is one of the forms of friction type welding, where there is a relative movement between the tool and work-piece. During the process, the edges of the aluminum 6061 T-6 parts to be joined are set up with flanged edges and afterward put against each other. A constant feed rate is given to the rotating disc, which moves transversally along the edged of work-piece, which leads to welding. By the action of crushing certain amount of flanged material into the gap by contacting material, formation of joint takes place. Taguchi method of Design of Experiments (DOE) is used to find optimal process parameters of Friction Crush Welding (FCW). Orthogonal Array L9, Signal to Noise ratio(S/N) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) are applied to analyze the impact of welding parameters (Feed rate, RPM and Profile of tool) on the weld properties like bond strength and hardness of weld surface. The experimental observation reveals that profile of rotating tool plays a vital role in deciding bond strength of the weld and its contribution is almost 72.26% while in case of hardness of weld, RPM of rotating tool contributes a maximum percentage
of 86.5%.
