Welding4.6
Joint Property of Refill Friction Stir Spot Welding for Aluminium Alloys
In other industrial fields, Resistance spot welding (RSW) is more populer but it is regarded as poorer in corrosion, fatigue stress, and process stability for aluminum alloy than riveting.
Recently, the aircraft is needed to reduce its weight for high-fuel efficiency, and Refill FSSW is expected to realize it.Refill FSSW has high flexibility in designing, and Refill FSSW makes no aditional weight, so its structure will be stronger and lighter than rivets structure.
Refill FSSW is solid state welding method and can create consistent strength joint. And it can also make joint with no key hole that usually resulted in conventional FSSW, additionally it consumes no additions such as rivet.
Thus Refill FSSW is expected to replace riveting structure, and to achieve weight reduction, cost reduction and manufacturing time reduction.
In this report, Refill FSSW system developed by Kawasaki Heavy Industries performed making joints which consist of aluminium alloys used for the aircraft.
And joints were examined to evaluate its performances with using various materials and thickness, such as tensile shear strength, strength of heat affected zone, and corrosion test. As results of examination, significant lap shear strength due to using shoulder plunging method was achieved with shorter process time.
And fine joint can be made even with Alodine or Chromic Acid Anodize coated material, and with faying sealant material.
And finally, experimental production parts were experimentally produced with Refill FSSW robot. Fine preproduction with no distortion and sufficient quality was obtained. Refill FSSW will be able to be regarded as suitable for fabrication of aircraft components.