Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Friction stir welding by using counter-rotating twin tool

K. Kumari a , Surjya K. Pal a, , Shiv Brat Singh b
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 721302, Kharagpur, India
b
Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, 721302, Kharagpur, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A twin-tool setup has been designed and fabricated to make a comparative study between twin tool and
Received 28 April 2014 single tool using double pass in a friction stir welding process. Twin tool helps in generating high heat
Received in revised form 22 July 2014 causing intense plastic deformation in the processed zone. Defect free weld depends not only on the
Accepted 25 July 2014
rotational speed, but also on the combined effect of welding speed and rotational speed. Higher hardness
Available online 2 August 2014
prole is observed with higher welding and rotational speeds; defect-free joints are also observed in
this combination. Further, SEM results conrm the existence of ductile failure with microscopic voids of
Keywords:
different shapes and sizes.
Friction stir welding
Counter rotating twin tool 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Friction stir welding (FSW), invented in 1991 by The Welding
Institute (TWI) (Thomas et al., 1991), is a solid state welding tech-
nique where the peak temperature reached is below the melting
point of the material to be welded (Mishra and Ma, 2005). Besides
it is seen that there is a signicant progress in welding process as
well as its properties of the welded joints (Nandan et al., 2008).
Further this technique is widely utilized in joining metals like Al,
Mg, Cu, Ti and their alloys. Cam and Mstkoglu (2014) reviewed
and narrated the detailed studies on friction stir welding of dif-
ferent types of aluminium alloys. They highlighted their study
mainly on the correlation of weld parameters with the mechanical
as well as microstructural properties of the welded joints. Fur-
ther, Cam (2011) also reviewed their research against different
types and grades of metals and alloys in addition to aluminium
like Ti, Mg, Cu, steel as well as MMC. They mainly studied on the
joint properties with microstructural studies and to some extent
on the material selection of the FSW tools. Thomas and Nicholas
(1997) used FSW technique to join aluminium alloy with a thick-
ness varying from 1.6 to 12.7 mm and also extended to 75 mm thick
plate by using two passes. In contrast to fusion welding technique,
Abbreviations: FSW, friction stir welding; FSP, friction stir processing; GBS,
grain boundary sliding; AGG, abnormal grain growth; MPFSP, multi-pass friction stir
processing; TT, twin tool; STDP, single tool with double pass; YS, yield strength;
UTS, ultimate tensile strength; % Elng, percentage of elongation; JOINT EFF, joint
efciency.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 3222 282996; fax: +91 3222 255303.
E-mail address: skpal@mech.iitkgp.ernet.in (S.K. Pal).
surface oxide layer does not create any difculty to this process.
XungHong and Kuaishe (2006) discussed the mechanical proper-
ties and microstructural evolution of 4 mm thick AZ31 Mg alloy.
Defect-free welds were obtained with enhanced characteristics like
ne grains having small intermetallic compound, higher hardness
with a joint strength of 93% of that base metal. Similar kinds of stud-
ies were explored by Lee and Jung (2004) with copper alloy using an
optimum and constant process parameter. Having excellent prop-
erties like high melting and specic strength, Ti alloys are being
used in many elds like aerospace, nuclear, military applications as
well in medical elds. Therefore, it is important to nd a solution
in joining of those alloys. The use of conventional fusion welding
technique over Ti resulted in the formation of brittle structure with
distorted residual and mechanical properties. Thus, Lee et al. (2005)
also implemented FSW process with water cooling system to weld
pure Ti sheet using sintered TiC tool and revealed better properties
compared to the conventional one. FSW has also advanced its scope
in joining dissimilar alloys (Ipekoglu and Cam, 2014) with dissimi-
lar thickness and also in the welding of steels (Thomas et al., 1999).
They used 12 mm and 15 mm thick low carbon steel plates of differ-
ent grades for welding and revealed that unlike aluminium or non
ferrous alloys, a distinctive change in colour in the thermo vision
infrared imaging system gave the range of temperature change dur-
ing welding process. Further, friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is
also an elevation in this technology for spot welding of different
alloys both in butt as well as lap positions. Bozkurt et al. (2013) stud-
ied the effect of sheet locations (up or down) on the joint strength of
lap welded dissimilar alloys of AA5754-H22 to 2024-T3 using FSSW.
FSW has a number of advantages over the conventional welding
techniques such as very low distortion, no fumes, no consuma-
bles (no ller wire), no special surface treatment, no shielding gas

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2014.07.031
0924-0136/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141
Symbols
v rotational speed (rpm)
w welding speed (mm/min)
requirements, and no specialized welding skills. Therefore, this is an
improved technique of joining with better mechanical properties
compared to the conventional welding. Having these advantages
FSW is being widely used in the aerospace, automobile industries,
ship buildings and many other elds.
Though this reliable technique of joining metals and alloys has
a lot of advantages it may be mentioned that complete elimination
of defects is not possible. Common defects associated with FSW
include lack of penetration, tunnel, worm hole, kissing bond and
Lazy S (Chen et al., 2006) and these are all due to improper weld
parameters. Kim et al. (2006) also studied three different types
of defects formed due to the difference in tool plunging forces.
They observed that higher heat input generates the ash forma-
tion defects but cavity or groove-like defects were caused due to
insufcient heat input. Further, at a combined effect of higher rota-
tional speed and welding speed abnormal stirring occurs at a less
plunge force/depth. Hence, mechanical properties usually degrade
when welding conditions are not chosen properly. Therefore a
careful selection of welding process parameters (such as weld tra-
verse speed, rotational speed, plunge depth or plunge force, tool
geometry etc.) is essential to avoid the defects (Leal and Loureiro,
2004).
Researchers are therefore, mainly focussed on the ways to
achieve defect-free weld by using multi-pass FSW/Friction stir
processing (FSP) with nominal process parameters. By using the re-
welding technique, the defective portion of the weld left with the
rst pass is repaired (Brown et al., 2009) by the second pass. Recent
literature reports several examples related to multi-pass FSP/FSW
on similar and dissimilar materials.
Brown et al. (2009) performed ve overlapping passes and found
that there is no need of any adjustment for multi-pass welding.
Further, there is a signicant reduction in feed force when weld-
ing is done over the previous weld. However, grain size, hardness
and temperature during welding are unaffected with the number
of passes. Again, a gradual reduction of residual stress is noted
with increasing number of passes. Nataka et al. (2006) reported a
betterment of the mechanical properties in aluminium die casting
alloy using multi-pass FSP. Compared to the base metal, hardness
value and the tensile strength of the multi-passed specimen are
Fig. 1. Twin tool attachment with schematic diagram.
133
high. The main reason for improvement of mechanical proper-
ties is due to the removal of cold ake, uniform distribution of
the silicon particles over the aluminium matrix which renes the
grain. On the other hand, Ma et al. (2006) reported that there is
no effect of overlapping passes on size, aspect ratio or distribution
of the Si particle while performing ve-pass FSP with 50% over-
lap on cast A365. Leal and Loureiro (2008) investigated the effect
of overlapping FSW passes using two Al alloys (AA5083-O and AA
6063-T6). They found that the quality and strength of the welded
joint not only depend on the weld parameters, but also on the
type of material used and its heat treatment conditions. Experi-
mentally they also found, weld polishing improves the mechanical
joint efciency.
As FSP is one of the most promising techniques for grain
renement, and removal of aws and defects, many researchers
used multi-pass FSP to improve the properties of as-cast mate-
rial. Johannes and Mishra (2007) demonstrated the effectiveness of
multiple passes to create large areas of materials with super plas-
tic properties. They concluded that, grain boundary sliding (GBS) is
the most important mechanism to achieve the super plastic defor-
mation. Similarly, Ma et al. (2009) noted that two-pass FSP shows
enhanced super plastic elongation as compared to the single pass.
Further, temperature rise in central as well as transitional zone of
the second pass is more than the temperature corresponding to
the single pass. Surekha et al. (2008) reported that multi-pass FSP
showed better corrosion resistance compared to the base metal.
This is due to the reduction and dissolution of the CuAl2 particles,
which decreases the number of sites available for galvanic coupling.
Ipekoglu et al. (2012) studied the effect of temper condition on the
weldability of AA 7075 Al alloys along with different parametric
conditions. Ipekoglu et al. (2013) further studied the effect of weld
parameters as well as the temper conditions on the joint quality and
its performance on AA 6061 aluminium alloys. In addition to that
Ipekoglu et al. (2014a) enhanced their study to see the outcome of
post weld heat treatment (PWHT) on both microstructure as well as
the mechanical properties of AA6061-O and AA6061-T6 aluminium
alloys. Further, they described the reason behind the formation of
abnormal grain growth (AGG) which occurs during PWHT. Severe
plastic deformation occurs in case of FSW leading to store higher
energy inside the ne grains. Upon subsequent heat treatment
inhomogeneous grain size distribution leads to AGG. They observed
that PWHT improves the properties of the welded joints though
the formation of AGG and it is more in O-temper case as com-
pared to the T6 alloys. Further, Ipekoglu et al. (2014b) highlighted
the growth of abnormal grains after post weld heat treatment
of 7075 Al plate. They also conrmed that weld parameters
134 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141

Table 1
Chemical composition (wt%) of the workpiece material.

Si Fe Cu Mn Mg Zn Ti Ga Na Others Remainder aluminium

0.705 0.831 .005 0.013 0.004 0.003 0.004 0.011 0.002 Max. 0.05% 98.7

Fig. 3. Photograph of the welded plate using TT setup.

Therefore using re-welding technique, defective portions of the

Fig. 2. Specially designed xture for FSW.
plays a very crucial role on the evolution of AGG. Humphreys
and Hatherly (2004) also reported that the abnormal secondary
grains are formed at the cost of smaller grains due to exces-
sive growth. These grains look similar to the primary crystallized
grains.
Using cast Al alloy, Jana et al. (2010) reported that multiple
passes helped in removal of abnormal grain growth (AGG) as
mentioned above. They also found that higher rotational speed is
benecial in controlling the AGG. Barmouz and Givi (2011) used
multi-pass FSP (MPFSP) to improve metallurgical and mechanical
properties of Cu/SiC metal matrix composites. Result shows that
SiC particles are dispersed and fragmented to smaller size due to
severe stirring action in the nugget zone of the copper matrix, which
also created strong interfacial bonding by removing the porosity.
Ni et al. (2011) used Multi-pass overlapping FSP to transform the
coarse as-cast microstructure of NiAl bronze alloy (NAB) base metal
to get defect free material with ne microstructure. Similar type of
study had been conducted by Izadi and Gerlich (2012). They stud-
ied the effect of multi-pass FSP on the distribution and stability of
carbon nano-tube and also fabricated the metal matrix composite
of AL 5059 with multi walled carbon nano-tubes.
welds can be repaired. But as the welded materials exhibit dif-
ferent metallurgical and mechanical properties compared to the
base metal, the selection of proper welding parameters for further
processing is also a big challenge. To avoid the use of multi-pass
FSW/FSP, the twin-tool-FSW concept is being developed at TWI
in several variations (Thomas, 1999). One of those techniques is
named as tandem twin-stir technique (Thomas et al., 2005). Tan-
dem twin-stir technique uses two FSW tools (with or without
counter rotation) positioned one infront of the other.
This new variant technique has lot of advantages over the
conventional method of friction stir welding. With two contra-
rotations, the resultant force counters each other. It reduces the
torque value and also requires less clamping force for the parts to
be welded. As second tool moves over the welded portion made
by the rst tool, it helps in fragmenting the oxide layer remaining
inside the material after the rst tool (Thomas et al., 2005). As sec-
ond tool moves over the softened zone, it need not be too robust
like the primary one. Further a higher welding speed can be used
in this new technique.
Though the twin stir techniques was proposed by TWI, but no
detailed research on mechanical properties, microstructure and
process optimization has been carried out till date. The present
work thus aims to design a contra-rotating twin tool to investigate

60 60
60 TT
TT TT 55
55 55 ST-DP
ST-DP ST-DP
50 50 50
Hardness (HV)

Hardness (HV)

Hardness (HV)

45 45 45
40 40 40
35 35 35
30 30 30
25 25 25
20 20
-10 -5 0 5 10 20
-10 -5 0 5 10 -10 -5 0 5 10
Distance from weld centre (mm)
Distance from weld centre (mm)
Distance from weld centre (mm)
(a) 1800 rpm- 16 mm/min weld speed (b) 1800 rpm- 31.5 mm/min weld speed (c) 1800 rpm- 63 mm/min weld speed

Fig. 4. ((a)(c)) Effect of TT and ST-DP on the nugget zone hardness at constant rotational speed of 1800 rpm with different welding speed.
 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141 135

Table 2
Macrographs of welded samples using twin tool.

Sl no. Rotational speed (v)Welding Macrostructure of cross section Quality and defect
speed (w)

1 v = 900 rpm, w = 16 mm/min Tunnel defect found at the centre of cross section of the weld

2 v = 1120 rpm Both pin hole and tunnel defect found

w = 16 mm/min

3 v = 1400 rpm Pinhole with crack like defect

w = 16 mm/min

4 v = 1800 rpm Visible pin hole with kissing bond defects

w = 16 mm/min

5 v = 900 rpm Visible pin hole towards the bottom side of the weld zone
w = 31.5 mm/min

6 v = 1120 rpm Crack like defect at the middle zone

w = 31.5 mm/min

7 v = 1400 rpm Kissing bond due to improper mixing

w = 31.5 mm/min

8 v = 1800 rpm w = 31.5 mm/min Kissing bond due to improper mixing

9 v = 900 rpm No macroscopic defects found

w = 63 mm/min

10 v = 1120 rpm No defect

w = 63 mm/min
136 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141

Table 2 (Continued)

Sl no. Rotational speed (v)Welding Macrostructure of cross section Quality and defect
speed (w)

11 v = 1400 rpm Kissing bond due to improper mixing

w = 63 mm/min

12 v = 1800 rpm No defect

w = 63 mm/min

the effect of two counter rotating FSW tool (tandem twin-stir) elements with little grease requirement. The power transmission
on the friction stir processing/welding region of commercially from primary to secondary tool is similar to that of the power
pure aluminium alloys. So these areas have to be investigated for transmission from a driver to a driven gear. This setting makes
further enlightment. both the tools rotate relatively opposite to each other.
2.5 mm thick plate of commercially pure 1100 aluminium alloy
2. Experimental work was welded using twin tool (TT) and single tool with double pass
(ST-DP). In both the cases, welds were made with complete over-
In order to investigate the characteristics of twin tool, a twin lapping passes. Both the plates were clamped using a self designed
tool set-up was designed and fabricated as shown in Fig. 1(a) for xture as shown in Fig. 2. In the conventional xture, mostly the
friction stir welding. Twin-tool consists of two tools-primary and
secondary, rotating relatively opposite to each other. The primary
tool was mounted on the main spindle shaft rotating at the same
rotational speed and in the same direction as that of the spindle
during the welding process. The secondary tool was connected
with the primary tool by the help of gear assembly (see Fig. 1(b)).
EN24T grade steel with hardness of 56 HRC was used as gear
material. EN 24 steel was used because of its easy machinabil-
ity, high tensile strength (850 to 1000 N/mm2 ) with the shock
resistance, ductility and wear resistance. Again for a range of high
temperature applications, EN 24 steel is very much suitable. Spur
gear having 18 teeth is used with 2.1 mm module. The calculation
is based on the distance between two FSW tools36.8 mm in
our case. Further, bearings 6202ZZ SKF containing metal shield
plate on both the sides are provided to facilitate the motion or
rotation of the moving elements by minimizing friction. This type
of bearing has the advantage of low contaminants of unwanted

60
1800-16 (ST-DP)
55
1800-31.5 (ST-DP)
50 1800-63 (ST-DP)
45
Hardness (HV)

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
-10 -5 0 5 10
Distance From weld centre (mm)

Fig. 5. Effect of ST-DP on the hardness value at 1800 rpm for different values of Fig. 6. Correlation of micro-hardness with macrograph at 1800 rpm for different
welding speed. values of welding speed using TT.
 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141 137

TT TT TT
ST-DP ST-DP ST-DP
% Elng & Joint Efficiency 80 80 80

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

YS,UTS (in MPa)

YS,UTS (in MPa)

YS,UTS (in MPa)
60 60 60

40 40 40

20 20
20

0 0
YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF. YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF. 0
YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF.
(a) 900 rpm-16 mm/min weld speed (b) 1120 rpm-16 mm/min weld speed (c) 1400 rpm-16 mm/min weld speed

TT TT TT
ST-DP ST-DP ST-DP
80 80 80
% Elng & Joint Efficiency

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

YS,UTS (in MPa)

YS,UTS (in MPa)

YS,UTS (in MPa)

60 60 60

40 40 40

20 20 20

0 0 0
YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF. YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF. YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF.
(f) 1400 rpm-31.5 mm/min weld speed
(d) 900 rpm- 31.5 mm/min weld speed (e) 1120 rpm-31.5 mm/min weld speed

TT TT
TT
ST-DP ST-DP
80 ST-DP 80
80

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

% Elng & Joint Efficiency

YS,UTS (in MPa)

YS,UTS (in MPa)
YS,UTS (in MPa)

60 60
60

40 40
40

20
20 20

0
0 0 YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF.
YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF.
YS UTS %ELNG JOINT EFF.
(g) 900 rpm- 63 mm/min weld speed (h) 1120 rpm-63 mm/min weld speed (i) 1400 rpm-63 mm/min weld speed

Fig. 7. ((a)(i)) Effect of TT and ST-DP on YS, UTS, % elongation and joint efciency of the welded samples.

bed is made up of single material. However, in this newly designed done with diamond paste using variable speed grinder polishing
xture a rectangular slot is provided at the middle portion of the machine (Buehler, Ecomet 3000). Kellers reagent was used to etch
bed. Depending on the thickness and material properties of the the polished surface. A Vickers hardness indentation machine
workpiece to be welded, proper xture material should be chosen (Buehler, Micromet 5103) with 200 gmf with 15 s dwell time
over which welding can be done, without sticking to the surface of was used to get the hardness prole of the welded sample on a
the plate. Here mica sheet was used as the xture material which cross section normal to the welding direction. To evaluate the
acts as an insulator to overcome the heat generated due to simulta- tensile strength of the welded samples, specimens were cut by
neous rotation of the two tools. The nominal chemical composition using CNC wire cut electro discharge machine (Elektra, Maxicut
of the plate material done through OES, is shown in Table 1. The 523) in a direction normal to the weld line. The tensile test was
FSW was carried out at knee type vertical milling machine (BFW, carried out at normal room temperature using INSTRON-8862
VF3.5), which has a wide range of rotational speed (45 to 1800 rpm)
and welding speed/feed rate (16 to 800 mm/min).
120 1800-16
A non-consumable tool made of SS316 stainless steel with 1800-31.5
% Elng & Joint Efficiency

16 mm shoulder diameter and a cylindrical pin of 5 mm diame- 100 1800-63

ter and 2 mm length was used for welding. Twelve numbers of
YS, UTS (in MPa)

experiments were performed using TT and ST-DP by varying rota- 80

tional and welding speeds. The rotational speeds used in this study
were 900, 1120, 1400, 1800 rpm and welding speeds were 16, 31.5, 60
63 mm/min. The butted plate with simultaneous double pass using
40
the twin tool setup is shown in Fig. 3.
To examine the surface defects, macroscopic analysis was done 20
at 10 magnication by using trinocular stereo zoom microscope
(Leica S6D) with image analysis software (Leica QWin-V3). Appro- 0
YS UTS% ELNGJ.EFF -- YS UTS% ELNGJ.EFF
priate specimens for metallographic examination were sectioned
TT ST-DP
to include welded zone, heat affected zone, thermo-mechanical
zone and unaffected base metal region. Samples were polished Fig. 8. Effect of TT and ST-DP on YS, UTS, % elongation and joint efciency of the
with a set of emery papers of different grades. Final polishing was welded samples at constant rotational speed of 1800 rpm.
138 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141

Table 3
Appearance of the test pieces after tensile tests.

TT ST-DP

90016

112016

140016

180016

90031.5

112031.5

140031.5

180031.5

90063

112063

140063

180063

machine with a ram speed of 1 mm/min with a strain rate of tool are defect-free. Hence defect-free weld depends on both the
5e4 /s. The fractured tensile surfaces were studied using scan- rotational speed and the welding speed.
ning electron microscope (JOEL-JSM 5800) to analyse the failure
patterns. 3.2. Hardness testing

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Macrostructural analysis
Porosity, solidication cracking, inclusions are some of the
defects in fusion welding process which degrades the quality of
the weld and the property of the joint. These defects are not gener-
ated in case of friction stir welding as there is no melting of metal.
Joining in case of FSW takes place due to the stirring action of
metal and the heat generated by friction. However due to improper
selection of process parameters, defects such as pinhole, tunnels,
piping defect, kissing bond and cracks are generated in the friction
stir welded joints. Even FSW done using twin-tool shows some of
the defects such as tunnel, pin hole, wormhole and kissing bond.
Macrostructures of the welded regions using twin tool attachment
operated at different rotational speeds (v, rpm) and welding speeds
(w, mm/min) are shown in Table 2. The analysis shows that at high
rotational speed and high welding speed, joints formed using twin
Fig. 4 shows the hardness proles of the welds made with
TT and ST-DP at 1800 rpm with varying welding speeds. Welds
made with twin tool show higher value of hardness, compared to
the two pass FSW joints for the most of the welding parameters
(all the gures are not given here). This is due to the hardening
effect caused by intense stirring action in the processed zone. As
the material in the nugget zone is subjected to double stirring
actions, the intensity of heat input is more in case of twin tool.
As a result, cooling rate is more than that of single pass mate-
rial. Likewise, in the case of the two-pass using single tool, any
point in the welding line, material is subjected to double stir-
ring actions but there is a time delay in between two passes.
Therefore, cooling rate is less as compared with that of twin tool
passes. Further, from the Fig. 4(c), it is revealed that welds made
with twin tool show higher hardness values compared to the sin-
gle tool with double pass to 1800 rpm with 63 mm/min welding
speed. Figs. 5 and 6 show the effect of welding speed at a con-
stant rotational speed of 1800 rpm for ST-DP and TT. TT gives higher
 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141 139

Table 4
Images of the fractured surfaces.

Parameter TT ST-DP

90016

140016

180031.5
140 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141
Table 4 (Continued)
Parameter TT
90063
140063
hardness prole in comparison to ST-DP. Further Fig. 6 shows the
correlation of micro-hardness with macrostructure results, where
1800 rpm with 63 mm/min welding speed shows defect free joint
than that of with 1800 rpm with 16 mm/min and 31.5 mm/min
weld speed. This can also be analysed by the micro-hardness
value.
3.3. Tensile testing
Fig 7ai shows the comparison between yield strength (YS),
ultimate tensile strength (UTS), percentage of elongation (% Elng)
and joint efciency (j. eff.) of the welded joints using TT and ST-
DP. It is observed that the yield strength of joint fabricated by
both TT and ST show no signicant variation at any of the weld
parameters. Moreover, at higher rotational speed i.e. at 1800 rpm
both TT and ST-DP show negligible variations in YS, UTS, % Elng
and joint efciency irrespective of the welding speed. Fig. 8 com-
pares the YS, UTS, % Elng and joint efciency of welds made with
TT and ST-DP at 1800 rpm with variations in welding speed. It is
seen that both TT and ST-DP show almost similar resultant val-
ues at a constant rotational speed of 1800 rpm irrespective of the
change in welding speeds. Table 3 shows the photographs of the
test pieces after tensile testing using TT and ST-DP. It is seen that
ST-DP
the test pieces break at the point where there is a difference in
hardness. In most of the parametric combinations, specimens break
at the heat affected zone or near the base metal region, which
proves sound weld. But subjected to 1400 rpm with 16 mm/min,
1120 rpm with 31.5 mm/min and 1120 rpm with 63 mm/min TT
gives the minimum hardness at the weld zone due to the presence
of defect, and shows the region of fracture. Similarly, 900 rpm with
16 mm/min and 900 rpm with 63 mm/min, minimum hardness is
achieved with ST-DP. Hence, it is concluded that the position of frac-
ture in the weld reects the location of minimum hardness zone,
which implies the correlation between the joint strength and the
micro-hardness property.
3.4. Fractography
The fractured surfaces of the welded plates under tension are
shown in Table 4 for TT and ST-DP. SEM study showing the pres-
ence of microscopic voids of different sizes and shapes conrms the
existence of ductile failure. In this case cup like depression called
dimples are exhibited, and it is termed as dimple rupture. The frac-
tured surfaces of the tensile samples were populated with a large
number of ne dimples revealing ductile failure. This type of sit-
uation arises due to severe stirring action causing intense plastic
 K. Kumari et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 215 (2015) 132141
deformation. On the contrary, due to the combined effect of differ-
ent process parameters, brittle fracture or cleavage type fracture
occurred. At 900 rpm and 16 mm/min welding speed the welded
specimen shows different nature of fractured surface. In this case
welded specimen using TT is fractured outside the weld zone which
is similar to the position of breaking point under tensile loading.
However, using ST-DP the specimen breaks at the stir zone region,
as shown in Table 3, which shows partly ductile and partly brittle
fracture. Similarly, with TT the specimen breaks at the mid-zone of
the weld region with 1400 rpm and 16 mm/min welding speed. The
fractured surface shows a combination of ductile and cleavage type
fracture. Therefore, when the specimen breaks at the weld zone or
nearby the fractured surface, it is the result of ductile and brit-
tle fracture due to high heat generation in that zone which causes
intense plastic deformation.
4. Conclusions
An experimental setup has been designed and fabricated to see
the effect of TT in FSW. Further, study has been made to analyse
the effect of TT as well as ST-DP on the formation of friction stir
welding zone in a commercially pure aluminium (Al) alloy with
different rotational speeds and welding speeds. From this, the fol-
lowing conclusions are drawn:
(1) At 1800 rpm, welds made with TT shows higher hardness prole
than ST-DP under all values of welding speed.
(2) Formation of defect-free weld is a function of both the rotational
speed and the welding speed. Joints fabricated at 1800 rpm and
63 mm/min welding speed show the highest hardness prole
compared to the other welded joints.
(3) Welds made with 900 rpm with 31.5 mm/min welding speed
give maximum value of YS of 44 MPa, UTS of 87 MPa, and joint
efciency of 73% compared to the weld made with double pass.
On the hand, ST-DP is having 22% of elongation, which is higher
compared to the twin tool.
(4) The presence of microscopic voids of different sizes and shapes
conrm the existence of ductile failure, where the specimen
breaks outside the nugget zone. The existence of ductile failure
has also been conrmed from the result of fractured surface of
the tensile specimen.
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