FRICTION CRUSH WELDING OF AISI 304 STAINLESS STEEL SHEETMETAL WORKPIECES
by Manpreet Singh
Abstarct
AISI 304 stainless steel is widely used in engineering applications particularly in paper, chemical and food processing industry. Friction crush welding (FCW) is type of friction welding, where there is a relative motion between the tool and workpiece. In FCW process, the tool rotates with a constant speed and workpieces (which are going to be weld at edges) are transversely fed at a constant rate. Workpieces are prepared with flanged edges and then placed against each other and disc shaped tool makes frictional contact with the edges of the workpieces. Crushing action takes place at contact area of tool and workpieces which leads to welding. In the present work, Taguchi L9 Design of Experiments (DOE) technique was used to investigate the affect of tool profile, welding speed and RPM on bond strength and hardness of the joint. Tool profile has the greatest influence on weld properties as compared to other parameters. For improving bond strength, tool profile has highest contribution of 77.13% followed by RPM -20.27% and feed rate -2.55%. For improvement in hardness, tool profile has highest contribution of 72.68% followed by feed rate -17.74% and RPM-9.13%.
