Modeling Experience on Friction Stir Welding Using FLUENT

Friction Stir Welding (FSW) has recently gained wide acceptance in industry. This study will investigate the use of FLUENT, a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code, to model the flow of metal in the FSW process in the framework of non-Newtonian incompressible flow. Parametric study is conducted to assess the validity of using CFD to model the metal flow in FSW and to investigate the relation between the flow interactions, deformation zone, temperature distribution and force pattern to variations in the weld pitches, the relative depths and the tool shapes. Several findings are reported in the paper that can improve our understanding of the FSW process and at the same time assess the modeling capability using FLUENT.