Investigations on Formability Enhancement of Friction Stir Tailor-Welded Blanks

Abstract

Experimental and numerical investigations on the formability of longitudinally butt-welded tailor-welded blank of the same thickness prepared by friction stir welding are presented in this article. The friction stir-welding technique involves a solid-state stirring mechanism to butt weld the two blanks of aluminum alloy AA5083 and AA6082 both in the annealed state. To study the effect of welded region on formability, experiments are performed on tailor-welded blanks with and without the annealing operation. The tensile properties of the parent sheets, welded blanks, and welded region are determined by performing standard uniaxial tension tests. The elastic properties, true stress–true strain, and anisotropic data sets are used in the material model for the prediction of failure strains to develop forming limit plots. The predicted results from finite element analysis are validated with the experimental results obtained from the limiting dome height test. The annealing is observed to enhance the formability of the friction stir tailor-welded blank (FSTWB) by almost 13% in plane strain and equibiaxial stretch conditions.