Title: Modelling of friction stir welding processes with a coupled immersed boundary-/volume of fluid-approach

Authors: Uwe Janoske; Markus Bürger; Tobias Geiger

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany ' Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract: Friction stir welding (FSW) is an alternative to conventional joining processes for aluminium. Due to the process temperature which is below the liquidus temperature of the material, numerous problems can be avoided compared to conventional techniques. The modelling of the process was subject of different numerical approaches in the past. In this work, the FSW shall be modelled by an immersed boundary method capable of describing arbitrary movements of the tool. The materials which have to be joint are modelled by different phases in a volume of fluid (VOF) method. Using this approach, the intermixing of the phases, the temperatures in the materials as well as the acting forces on the tool can be obtained. The focus in this paper is on the evaluation of the temperature distribution in FSW. Treating each material as a separate phase makes this model suitable for joining different materials.

Keywords: CFD; friction stir welding; FSW; volume of fluid; VOF; immersed boundary; IB.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2019.097602

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2019 Vol.19 No.1, pp.55 - 62

Accepted: 22 Jul 2017
Published online: 31 Jan 2019 *

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