Contemporary Engineering Sciences, Vol. 10, 2017, no. 34, 1659 - 1667
HIKARI Ltd, www.m-hikari.com
https://doi.org/10.12988/ces.2017.711156
Thermo-Mechanical Modeling of
Friction-Stir Welding
Tool Used in Aluminum Alloys Joints
Jonathan Fabregas Villegas
1
, Jennifer Villa Dominguez
2
,
Guillermo Valencia Ochoa
3
and Jimy Unfried-Silgado
4
1
Grupo de Investigación IMTEF, Programa de Ingeniería Mecánica
Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, Colombia
2
Grupo de Investigación GI Fourier, Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica
Universidad Antonio Nariño, Colombia
3
Grupo de Investigación KAI, Programa de Ingeniería Mecánica
Universidad del Atlántico, Colombia
4
Grupo de Investigación, Ciencia y Tecnología ICT, Departamento de Ingeniería
Mecánica, Universidad de Córdoba, Colombia
Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Fabregas Villegas et al. This article is distributed under the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
In this paper we study the thermomechanical effects generated in the tool used in
the friction-stir welding (FSW) process by finite element analysis (FE) in welded
joints of structural aluminum AA1100. A modeling was carried out using Structural
Multiphysics and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) couplings using tools with
three different shoulder profiles (flat, spiral and concentric), in order to evaluate the
influence of its geometry on the heat generated during the process and heat
transferred and mechanical stress on the tool. As a result, thermal profiles, stress
analysis, heat generated in the process and torque transmitted in the joint and tool
interaction zone were obtained. In addition, the values of heat loss through the tools
were estimated, which are less than 10%, with 87% of the melting temperature
reached of the joints, corroborating the established in the literature.