Viblade™: friction stir welding for plastics

Abstract

Friction stir welding (FSW) is a welding process that may be successfully used with metals. The application of this technology to plastics has had limited success due to their thermal and viscoelastic properties.

Viblade™ is a new variant of FSW for plastics: this process heats the material to be welded using a blade and a shoulder which vibrate with a linear alternating motion parallel to the weld line.

This paper has adopted the ‘design of experiments’ technique to assess the influence of the process parameters and blade geometry on the width of the thermally altered zone and the mechanical strength of the joint. In addition, a 2D thermal finite element thermal analysis has been conducted to evaluate the thermal phenomena involved in the process.

Keywords:

• finite element analysis
• friction stir welding: friction welding
• heat affected zone
• plastics
• process conditions
• process parameters
• process variants
• thermal properties

Notes

Paper presented at the 4th National Welding Day, Workshop: ‘New Frontiers in Laser, FSW and EB Welding Processes’ Genova, 25–26 October 2007.