A Study of the Effect of Tool Pin Profiles on Tensile Strength of Welded Joints Produced Using Friction Stir Welding Process

Friction stir welding (FSW) has evolved into a process focused on joining of arc-weldable (5xxx and 6xxx) and which are difficult to weld (2xxx and 7xxx) aluminium alloys. The method described in this article for the prediction of tensile properties and optimization can eliminate the need for performing experiments on the basis of conventional trial and error method. The present study is aimed to identify the most influencing significant parameter and percentage contribution of each parameter on tensile strength of friction stir welded AA 7075–T6 aluminium joints by conducting minimum number of experiments using Taguchi orthogonal array. In this study, tool pin profiles like square head and conical head are used. Signal–to-noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are employed to find the contribution of the main welding parameters like tool rotational speed, weld traversing speed, and plunge depth on tensile strength of the welded joint. Confirmation experiments were conducted to validate the es...