Advances in friction welding process: a review

What is it about?

Friction welding is now well established as one of the most economical and highly productive methods in joining similar and dissimilar metals. It is widely used in automotive and aerospace industrial applications. Friction welding is often the only viable alternative in this field to overcome the difficulties encountered in joining the materials with widely varying physical characteristics. This process employs a machine that is designed to convert mechanical energy into heat at the joint to weld using relative movement between workpieces, without the use of electrical energy or heat from other sources. This review deals with the fundamental understanding of the process. The focus is on the mechanism of friction welding, types of relative motions of the process, influence of parameters, heat generation in the process, understanding the deformation, microstructure and the properties of similar and dissimilar welded materials.

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Why is it important?

Given the challenges being faced by the manufacturing sector, FW, on the strength of its unique advantages is a process that makes increasing sense. Providing advantages that manufacturing companies can readily leverage, FW machinery has seen an astounding rise in inquiries from China and Southern Asia over the last years.110 It is perhaps a bit ironic that foreign producers have adopted this unique American grown technology to a greater degree than domestic firms. As engineers and product designers delve deeper into this process, they will come away convinced that FW can serve to optimise and perfect both the design of heretofore unrealised components and their cost of production. If, indeed, necessity is the mother of invention, then FW has a substantive role to play in the future of global manufacturing.

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