Friction Stir Welding Processes: A Review

Friction Stir Welding is a novel green solid state joining process particularly used to join high strength aerospace aluminum alloys which are otherwise difficult to weld by conventional fusion welding. Unlike other solid state joining technique, in Friction stir welding a third body contact by tool will generate the additional interface surfaces and finally all the surfaces are coalesced with each other by applied pressure and temperature and form solid state weld. This review paper addresses the overview of Friction stir welding which includes the basic concept of the process, microstructure formation, influencing process parameters, typical defects in FSW process and some recent applications. The paper will also discuss some of the process variants of FSW such as Friction Stir Processing, Friction Welding processes