Investigation of Alloy 2050 FSWelding

The aerospace community is continuously interested in lighter and stronger materials that can also be produced in large structural shapes.  AIREWARE 2050 is candidate alloy that can be produced in significantly thicker sections than its aluminum lithium predecessors.  Although the 2050 base material has a high level of maturity with a substantial mechanical properties database, the data available on 2050 weldments using friction stir welding (FSW) are very limited.  Recently, a team of students from the University of New Orleans and Louisiana State University in conjunction with the National Center for Advanced Manufacturing (NCAM) conducted a series of FSW trials on 2050 and 2219 in various weld configurations using self-reacting FSW pin tools.  The work was performed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) using an I-STIR Process Development System (PDS) and Universal Weld System II (UWS-2).  The AIREWARE material, donated by Lockheed Martin Corporation, represents a mass reduction opportunity for the Orion Command Module.  This paper will present results of FSW trials on 0.320” thick 2050-to-2050 plates in addition to 2050-to-2219 plates.  Furthermore, these alloy pairs will were subjected to manufacturing misalignments such as gap, mismatch, and peaking to compare the difference in mechanical properties versus the nominal (flat) joint configuration.