Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir butt joints of

dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique
M. Shunmugasundaram a,⇑, A. Praveen Kumar a, N.K. Amudhavalli b, S. Sivasankar c
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, CMR Technical Campus, Hyderabad 501401, India
b
Department of Civil Engineering, CMR College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad 501401, India
c
Department of Civil Engineering, CMR Technical Campus, Hyderabad 501401, India

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

Article history: Friction stir welding (FSW) is a solid-state welding method for amalgamation aluminum alloys and has
Received 6 January 2020 been used in aerospace, rail, automotive and marine applications. In FSW, the parent metal properties
Received in revised form 7 February 2020 such as tensile strength, ductility, and hardness are controlled the plastic flow of the metal under the
Accepted 8 February 2020
action of rotating non-consumable tool. The process parameters such as welding speed, Feed, tilt angle,
Available online xxxx
etc. play an important role in deciding the quality of weld in FSW. This work aims to investigate the ten-
sile strength of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminum sheets joined by FSW. The two aluminum
Keywords:
sheets are arranged in a line with perpendicular rolling directions of the tool. The Taguchi L9 experimen-
Friction stir welding
Dissimilar aluminium alloys
tal method is chosen to construct the numbers of welding experiments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA)
Taguchi approach analysis is performed to get the optimum range of process parameters and their effects upon the tensile
ANOVA analysis strength of the weld joints. The sheets are successfully welded and the welded sheets are tested under
Tensile strength tension at room temperature to examine the strength. The result shows that the welding speed is
900 rpm, feed is 40 mm/min and tilt angle 2.5 are the influential process parameters to join these dissim-
ilar joints.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the First International
conference on Advanced Lightweight Materials and Structures.

1. Introduction in deciding the strength of the FS welded dissimilar alloys. The

One of the best solid-state welding processes is Friction stir
welding (FSW) and its commonly used to join aluminum alloys.
FSW welding process allows the material to be joined well below
the melting temperature of the parent materials [1,2]. FSW is a
hot- cut off joining process [3–5] in which a rotating tool with a
shoulder and terminated in a tool pin, moves over the butting faces
of two rigidly fixed parent materials sheets fixed on a backing plate
as shown in Fig. 1. The shoulder is having very close contact with
the top face of the material sheets. AA 6063 is an age tough permit
aluminum alloy and AA 5052 is a strain tough permit aluminum
alloy and but both alloys show higher strength to weight ratio,
superior ductility, and higher corrosion resistance [6]. The geome-
try of tool and operational process parameters like welding speed,
feed, axial tool pressure, and tilt angle, etc.. are playing a vital role
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: sundarprithiv@gmail.com (M. Shunmugasundaram),
drnkamudhavalli@cmrcet.org (N.K. Amudhavalli).
influence of process parameters is optimized by different tech-
niques [7]. Taguchi approach is used to analyze the persuade over
the mechanical properties of the process parameter of FS butt
welded sheets [8–10]. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is pertained
to get the significant process parameters over the strength of
welded sheets [11,12]. The Main effects of S/N ratio values are
found and the contour plot graph is used to examine the effective-
ness of the process parameters [13–15]. The FSW is beneficial to
solder the structure of the butt, lap, T, and other welding joints
in a wide range of plastic duration and thickness. It was used to
weld combinations of dissimilar materials, especially those who
have near melting temperatures and related behaviors such as
warm robustness. It is not practical to joint-most alloys by fusion
welding, but it can be welded by friction swirl welding. As
described above, the performance of joints is calculated in the
metal joining system using mechanical characteristics such as ten-
sile strength, stiffness, durability of break, elongation, etc. There-
fore, other performance characteristics need to be weighed to
select the right system variable in friction stir welding (Table 1).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.166
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the First International conference on Advanced Lightweight Materials and Structures.

Please cite this article as: M. Shunmugasundaram, A. Praveen Kumar, N. K. Amudhavalli et al., Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir
butt joints of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2020.02.166
2 M. Shunmugasundaram et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 2. Hexagonal pin profile.

used to join the material in FSW and is displayed in Fig. 2. Normally

Fig. 1. Friction stir welding process. the tool is made up of hardened carbon steel. The number of weld-
ing experiments is selected by Taguchi L9 experimental approach
and ANOVA analysis is used to identify the optimizing process
Table 1
Range of process parameters. parameters and their effects on the tensile strength of the welded
pieces. In the Taguchi optimization approach, Larger is better is
S. NO Welding Speed (rpm) Feed (mm/min) Tilt Angle (Degree)
chosen for achieving high tensile strength. Three different operat-
1 900 50 3 ing ranges are selected for joining this aluminum are; welding
2 900 40 2.5
speed is 560, 700, 900 rpm, feed are 30, 40, 50 mm/min and tilt
3 560 40 3
4 700 50 3.5
angle are 2.5, 3, 3.5 degrees. The Taguchi approach is successfully
5 900 30 3.5 applied for the design and examines the tensile strength of the
6 700 30 2.5 welded specimens. Nine specimens are welded by the selected
7 560 50 2.5 operating process parameters. Electron Discharge Machining
8 560 30 3
(EDM) is used to cut the test specimen from the welded species.
9 700 40 3.5

2.2. Tensile test

The DOE is an effective way of maximizing the amount of data
The tensile test is the fundamental test of materials science and
collected and reducing the amount of data to be acquired by
engineering. Uni axial tensile testing machine is usually used to
reducing the number of trials [15,16]. The experimental technique
find the tensile strength of the welded specimens. For testing the
Taguchi L9 orthogonal is applied to develop the number of welding
welded dissimilar aluminum alloys, The TUE-C-200 (SERVO) type
tests (Table 1). The standard ASME hardness skeleton is obtained
computerized universal testing machine. American Standard Test-
for the tensile test using the wire cutting EDM (Electrical discharge
ing Material (ASME) is followed to test the welded specimen and is
machining). The plates are quickly assembled and the sample
shown in Fig. 3. The tensile test results are displayed in the Table 2.
sheets are tested with a Rockwell hardness tester at room temper-
The welded and tested specimens are shown in Fig. 4.
ature to fine-tune the strength of the welded specimen [17,18]. In
this study, the impact on the tensile strength of friction stir welded
joint of 6063 and 5052 alloys, such as rotational speed, transverse 3. Result and discussion
speed and tilt angle of the sheets, was predicted using Taguchi
process. 3.1. Taguchi parametric optimization

The optimization of process parameters can be done by the

2. Materials and methods Taguchi approach. Optimal process parameters value of welding
speed, feed, and tilt angle are obtained by this approach for attain-
2.1. Experimental procedure ing the maximum tensile strength. The optimized value is obtained
by the design of experiments in the Taguchi approach.
The AA6061 and AAA5052 dissimilar aluminum alloys are
selected to examine the influence of process parameters on 3.1.1. Signal to noise (S/N) ratio analysis for tensile strength
strength of the FSW welded joints. Alloy sheets are appropriately The orthogonal array is used to reduce the number of experi-
polished by grinding and emery papers are used to remove spur ments in the design of experiments. The experiment results are
from the polished material. Tool geometry and welding process converted in the form of signal to noise ratio. This S/N ratio is used
parameters are the influential parameters on the joints. The weld- to measure the variation of the performance individually from the
ing speed, Feed, and tilt angle are chosen as inflectional process desired values. In this analysis, the maximum tensile strength is
parameters for joining the dissimilar alloys. Fig. 1, shows the Fric- considered as a response. Mean of signal to noise ratio for tensile
tion stir welding arrangement. Hexagonal type of tool geometry is strength is shown in Table 3. The influence of process parameters
Please cite this article as: M. Shunmugasundaram, A. Praveen Kumar, N. K. Amudhavalli et al., Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir
butt joints of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2020.02.166
 M. Shunmugasundaram et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx 3

Fig. 3. ASME standard of tensile test specimens.

Table 2
Result of tensile strength.

S. NO Welding Speed (rpm) Feed (mm/min) Tilt Angle (Degree) Tensile Strength (MPa)
1 900 50 3 151.78
2 900 40 2.5 147.08
3 560 40 3 103.85
4 700 50 3.5 120.86
5 900 30 3.5 100.49
6 700 30 2.5 126.76
7 560 50 2.5 124.56
8 560 30 3 131.29
9 700 40 3.5 128.31

Fig. 4. (a) Extracted tensile test specimen (b) Tested specimens.

Table 3
Mean of S/N Ratio for tensile strength. angle are 134.69 and 101.33. The delta values for welding speed,
feed and tilt angle are 3.857, 1.623 and 1.66 respectively. The delta
Level Welding Speed (rpm) Feed (mm/min) Tilt angle (mm/min)
values are ranked from high to low and it shows that the welding
1 100.98 113.24 101.33 speed is more influence that the other two parameters. The F-value
2 124.87 116.42 122.06
and P-value for process parameters are shown as ANOVA table in
3 148.78 132.96 134.69
Delta 3.857 1.623 1.66 Table 4. The P-value of welding speed, feed and tilt angle are
Rank 1 2 3 0.085, 0.30 and 0.31 respectively. The Taguchi optimization and
is used to optimize the process parameters to achieve the good
strength of the weld joint at 95% confidence level. It means that
is checked by S/N ratio. The maximum and minimum S/N ratio for a value is 0.05. So, P-value of welding speed is 0.085 and this value
welding speed are 148.78 and 100.98. The maximum and mini- is less that a value. It means that welding speed is more influence
mum S/N ratio for feed are 132.96, 113.24 and this values for tilt than other two parameters.

Table 4
ANOVA table for tensile strength.

Source DF Adj. SS Adj. MS F-value P-Value

Welding Speed 2 22.9 11.3 10.72 0.085
Feed 2 5.03 2.51 2.39 0.30
Tilt angle 2 4.78 2.39 2.27 0.31
Error 2 2.11 1.05
Total 8 34.52

S = 3.024, R-sq = 83.9% , R-sq (adj) = 85.7%.

Please cite this article as: M. Shunmugasundaram, A. Praveen Kumar, N. K. Amudhavalli et al., Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir
butt joints of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2020.02.166
4 M. Shunmugasundaram et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
3.1.2. Contour plot analysis for tensile strength
The effect of two different process parameters on responses
(tensile strength) is found by the Contour plot. The contour plot
graph between welding speed and feed are shown in Fig. 5. It
shows that the welding speed and feed at 900 rpm and
50 mm/min and 600 rpm, 30 mm/min, the tensile strength is max-
imum. When the welding speed and feed is increasing, the tensile
strength will increase. The contour plot is drawn between feed and
tilt angle in Fig. 6. The tilt angle and feed are 40 mm/min, 2.5
Fig. 5. Tensile strength vs welding speed, feed.
Fig. 6. Tensile strength vs tilt angle, feed.
Fig. 7. Tensile strength vs tilt angle, welding speed.
Please cite this article as: M. Shunmugasundaram, A. Praveen Kumar, N. K. Amudhavalli et al., Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir
butt joints of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2020.02.166
degree and 50 mm/min, 3 degree, the tensile strength is maximum.
The contour plot between welding speed and tilt angle is shown in
Fig. 7. It shows that the tilt angle and welding speed are 3 degree
and 900 rpm, the tensile strength is maximum.
4. Conclusions
In this research, the two dissimilar aluminum alloys are welded
by FSW. The Taguchi L9 experimental approach is used to find the
nine numbers of welding experiments with different combinations
of the selected three process parameters. Based on the design of
experiments the dissimilar alloys are joined and ASME standard
tensile test specimen is extracted using the wire cut EDM. The spec-
imens are tested under tension using a universal testing machine at
room temperature to examine the strength. Optimum range pro-
cess parameters are found by ANOVA analysis their effects upon
the tensile strength of the weld joints are analyzed by contour plot.
 Dissimilar AA 6061 and AA 5052 aluminium alloys are joined by
friction stir welding by L9 orthogonal array approach.
 The delta values of mean of signal to noise ratio show that the
welding speed is more influence that the other two parameters.
ANOVA table is also proves the same.
 The contour plot shows that at high welding speed, medium
feed and low tilt angle produces high tensile strength opti-
mizaed value of process parameters for tensile strength are
welding speed is 900 rpm, feed is 40 mm/min and tilt angle
2.5 degree.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
M. Shunmugasundaram: Conceptualization, Investigation,
Methodology, Writing - original draft. A. Praveen Kumar:
Data curation, Methodology, Writing - review & editing.
N.K. Amudhavalli: Formal analysis, Validation, Visualization.
S. Sivasankar: Project administration, Resources, Software.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Please cite this article as: M. Shunmugasundaram, A. Praveen Kumar, N. K. Amudhavalli et al., Parametric optimization on tensile strength of friction stir
butt joints of dissimilar AA6061 and AA5052 aluminium alloys by Taguchi technique, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
matpr.2020.02.166