Thermal Modeling of Friction Stir Welding Tool

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a solid state welding process which generates heat through mechanical friction between a moving workpiece and a fixed component, in order to plastically combine materials. This process has been gaining considerable attention due to several key advantages, which include: good mechanical properties of the combined materials after welding, absence of toxic fumes and molten material spatter, low environmental impact, and low concentration of defects while allowing a large variationof parameters and materials. Generated heat is in proportion with large number of parameters, but most significant are contact pressure and friction between tool – weld pieces and speed. Significant thermal energy is generated during FSW and there is mathematical model which describe these stages but still there are several inaccuracies of the model that give some differences between theoretical and experimentally determined amount of heat. For this reason, this paper presents study on previous models and comparison their results and a numerical investigation of the temperature distribution by FSW tool, using MATLAB software and a new mathematical formula for frictional heatgeneration by FSW tool.