Investigation of mechanical behavior of friction stir welded joints of AA6063 with AA5083 aluminum alloys

Aluminum alloy finds its applications in various sectors of engineering. This paper discusses the investigation of mechanical characteristics of butt weld joints of aluminum alloy AA6063 along with AA5083. An experiment was conducted for different tool rotational speeds of 600 rpm, 800 rpm and 1000 rpm. Specifications of friction stir welding machine were 4 kN axial load and welding speed of 40 mm/min. Friction stir welded (FSW) joints of higher tensile strength, lower flexural strength and lower impact strength with maximum hardness, for the work piece fabricated at 1000 rpm using a high speed steel tool with a cylindrical profile was observed. Better understanding of the effect of tool rotational speed and mechanical properties was illustrated through the experimental result.

Comparison of Current Five-Point Cylindricity Error Separation Techniques

Cylindricity is a kind of three-dimensional form distortion of a cylinder. An accurate in situ measurement of cylindricity is relatively complex because measuring and reconstructing cylindrical profile and evaluating out-of-cylindricity should be involved. Any method of in situ measuring cylindricity must solve a common issue, i.e., to eliminate spindle error motions and carriage error motions during measurement and reconstruction. Thus, error separation techniques have played an important role in in situ cylindricity measurement through multipoint detections. Although several valuable five-point methods for in situ measurement of cylindrical profile have been proposed up to present, namely the parallel scan, spiral scan, and V-block scan, there are obvious differences in many aspects, such as the arrangement of probes, error separation model, reconstruction method, adaptability to service environment, accuracy and reliability in practical application, etc. This paper presents the evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages in theory and the actual measurement based on the standard ISO 12180. Suggestions for best meeting the requirements of modern manufacturing and the most prospective one for industrial applications are also given.