Prospect of Friction Stir Welding in Automobile TWB Production as Alternative of Laser Welding.

In some situation, commonly used welding processes (Laser and Seam welding) in car industry do not produce mechanically acceptable Tailor Welded Blanks (TWB). The present work explores whether the Friction Stir welding (FSW) can overcome three major drawbacks of Laser welding process to produce TWB for car industry. It is identified that some types of Aluminum to Aluminum joints, some combinations of High Strength Steels (HSS) to HSS joints and Steel to Aluminum joints are troublesome to produce by laser welding. Review of literature was used to get experimental and simulation results to a comparison of the results produced by Laser and FSW. Findings indicate that in many cases better mechanical qualities such as formability, hardness, tensile and yield strength of the welded joints and TWB can be achieved by using FSW, implying interesting alternative in car manufacture