The tool with polygonal pin profile has been widely employed in friction stir welding(FSW) of aluminum, but there is hardly an effective optimization methodology existed as the thermomechanical characteristics affected by pins with various flats number have not been understood comprehensively. Therefore, the present work employs a 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics(CFD) model to have an integrated observation of the FSW process with the effect of polygonal pin profiles. Both the heat generation modes due to contact friction at the tool–workpiece interface and volumetric viscous dissipation in the vicinity of the tool are considered. The model is utilized to give a quantitative analysis of the heat generation, temperature distribution, plastic material flow and welding loads during the FSW process for various tools with polygonal pin profiles, as well as a variety of shoulder diameters, welding speeds and tool rotation speeds. The calculated results of thermal cycles, tool torques and joint cross sections for some typical polygonal pins and welding parameters are all found to be compared well with the experimental ones, which demonstrates the feasibility and applicability of the present numerical model. Particularly, a methodology is developed for the optimization of the flats number by identifying the torque components in both parallel and vertical direction of the pin-side flat region. The results show that the optimized pin flats number increases with increasing tool rotation speed, while the influence of both welding speed and shoulder diameter can be supposed to be insignificant. Moreover, the dependability of the optimized results is also discussed by considering wear tendency and service life of the pin for multiple welding conditions.
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