STUDY ON FRICTION STIR WELDING ON

SHIPBUILDING STEEL
By Varun Mohandas
S7 ME B
VAS15ME114
OVERVIEW

■ INTRODUCTION
■ FSW
■ FSW IN SHIPBUILDING
■ TESTS CARRIED OUT
■ COMPARISON
■ ADVANTAGES
■ CONCLUSION
■ REFERENCE
 INTRODUCTION
■ FSW was invented in 1991 nowadays considered as an important milestone in the
history of welding technology.
■ The use of welded structures in shipbuilding industry has a long tradition and
continuously seeks for innovation in terms of materials and processes maintaining, or
even, reducing costs.
■ The FSW process is being actively developed for various shipbuilding activities (most
of these are military)
FRICTION STIR WELDING (FSW)

■ FSW was invented by Wayne Thomas at TWI (The Welding Institute) Ltd in 1991.

■ It overcomes many of the problems associated with conventional joining techniques.

■ FSW is low energy input, capable of producing very high strength welds in wode
range of materials at lower cost.
FSW (contd)

■ FSW process takes place in the solid phase below the melting point of the materials
to be joined

■ In FSW, a cylindrical, shouldered tool with a profiled probe is rotated and slowly
plunged into the joint line between two pieces butted together.

■ Frictional heat is generated between the wear resistant welding tool and the
material of the work pieces.
FSW (Contd)

■ This heat is without reaching the melting point and allows traversing of the tool
along weld line.

■ The plasticized material is transferred the front edge of the tool to back edge of the
tool probe and it’s forged by the intimate contact of the tool shoulder and pin profile.
FSW (Contd)
TOOL USED
TOOLS USED (Contd)
FSW IN SHIPBUILDING

■ The use of welded structures in shipbuilding industry has a long tradition and
continuously seeks for innovation in terms of materials and processes maintaining, or
even, reducing costs.

■ The FSW process is being actively developed for various shipbuilding activities (most
of these are military)
FSW IN SHIPBUILDING

■ The main material used for this study is the Shipbuilding steel grade GL E36.
FSW IN SHIPBUILDING

■ The dimension of the tool considered of shoulder diameter of 36.8 mm and probe
length of 6 mm.

■ The welding parameters employed were a constant rotational speed of 500 rpm with
1 mm/s, 2 mm/s and 3 mm/s welding speeds to achieve three different heat input
values.
FSW IN SHIPBUILDING

■ The heat input (HI) index was calculated according to Eq. :

.

■ where ω represents the rotational speed (radians per second), T represents the
torque supplied from the machine (Nm) and v the welding speed (m/s).
PROCESS PARAMETERS
TESTS CARRIED OUT

■ X-ray Inspection
– It is a NDT method used for detecting the defects present in the weld
■ Tensile test
– Tensile test were performed using a Zwick Roell universal testing machine with
a 100 kN load cell performed at room temperature according to the standard
for the joints specimens and for the base material
■ Bending test
– The bending tests have been carried out according to the standard using
HIDROALFA press machine model 20.
COMPARISON

■ Comparison between Friction stir and submerged arc welding to join DH36 and E36
grades
– An assessment of the distortion for the two welding techniques was reported
and an initial comparative data on weld tensile strength, toughness and fatigue
was provided

■ Based on their results, friction stir welding was shown to outperform submerged arc
welding
ADVANTAGES

■ Cost effective

■ Potential for lower distortion

■ Hydrogen cracking is not expected to be encountered in FSW due to the elimination

of the normal source of hydrogen.
CONCLUSION

■ The present study intends to fulfil the lack of technical and scientific knowledge
concerning friction stir welding application to GL E36 shipbuilding steel and provide,
therefore, mechanical and microstructure features of the welded joints.

■ From this study it was possible to show the feasibility of FSW for welding shipbuilding
steel producing good quality welds.
CONCLUSION

■ The process parameters were appropriately chosen since all the joints showed very
good esthetics and homogeneous surface quality. Nevertheless, when used 3 mm/s
as welding speed it was found lack of penetration.

■ The X-ray inspection has limitation to detect smaller defects, so it was mandatory to
additionally perform bending tests to evaluate the joint integrity.
REFERENCE

■ [1] Gibson BT, Lammlein DH, Prater TJ, Longhurst WR, Cox CD Ballunn MC, et al.
Friction stir welding: process, automation, and control. J Manuf Process
2014;16:56–73 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.JMAPRO.2013.04.002.

■ [2] Bhadeshia HKDH, DebRoy T. Critical assessment: friction stir Welding of steels.
Sci Technol Weld Join 2009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/136217109X421300.

■ [3] Mishra RS, Ma ZY. Friction stir welding and processing. Materia Scii Eng R Rep
2005;50:1–78 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.MSER.2005.07.001.
REFERENCE
■ Thomas WM, Threadgill PL, Nicholas ED. The feasibility of friction stir welding steel.
Science and Tecnhology of Welding and Joining. 1999;4(6):365-
372.http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/136217199101538012

■ Azevedo, J., Infante, V., Quintino, L., Santos, J. Fatigue behaviour of friction stir
welded steel joints. Advanced Materials Research. 2014;891-892:1488-1493.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.891-892.1488
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