Abstract
The patenting of the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) process in 1991 opened up a process that was known within a relatively small circle of researchers to the entire research community. As a ground-breaking process in the field of joining, FSW offered a chance for the types of joining that had been fraught with lots of difficulties using the prevalent traditional means of joining.
Dissimilar metal joining had been plagued with more challenges compared to similar metal joining due to issues related to differences in thermal expansion and conductivity, wettability, melting properties, microstructural properties and other material properties. Fusion welding of some dissimilar materials such as Aluminium and titanium; Aluminium and Steel had been nearly impossible; the few welds that were successful resulted in defects (like wormhole, lack of penetration, porosity, cracks) and welding imperfections. Hence, the advent of FSW, a solid state welding technique, provided a way out of the many difficulties that arise in the joining of dissimilar metals.
Aluminium and copper are also two of such dissimilar metals whose material properties make them useful for a wide range of applications. However, due to the wide differences in their material properties, both metals had been difficult to join using the fusion welding technology. Recently, lots of successes have been achieved in the joining of both dissimilar metals using FSW and a lot of these are recorded in the open literature. Nonetheless, most of the successes recorded in the FSW of aluminium and copper have been in the butt weld configuration. Literatures abound on the FSW of aluminium and copper in butt configuration, while there are...
M.Phil. (Mechanical Engineering)