A Study on Dissimilar FSW Process Parameters in Aluminum Alloy and Low Carbon Steel

The purposes of this research are to weld dissimilar metals joints, AA6061 aluminum alloy and SS400 low carbon steel, and to find the optimum operating conditions of friction stir welding (FSW). In the dissimilar FSW procedure, there were four major controllable factors, i.e., the tool rotation speed, transverse speed (feed rate), tool tilt angle with respect to the workpiece surface and pin tool diameter. The quality of dissimilar metals butt joints is evaluated by impact value. Additionally, One of uncontrollable parameters is ultimately tensile strength which has been proved to be an excellent quality in our previous research. Therefore, in this paper, the quality of dissimilar metals butt joints is evaluated by impact value only. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is the statistic method used to interpret these experimental data assigned to the L18 orthogonal arrays. Taguchi technique with ANOVA is used to find out the significant variables (factors) for the performance characteristic.