An investigation on friction hydro-pillar processing

ABSTRACT

Friction hydro pillar processing (FHPP) is a novel technique to fill in crack-holes in thick-walled metal structures by an external stud and forming a solid-state bond between the stud and the metal substrate. During the process, the stud is rotated against the crack-wall to facilitate friction heating and flow of plasticized material for proper filling of the crack-hole. We present here a coupled experimental and numerical study on FHPP of ASTM A36 steel to understand the effect of processing conditions on the joint structure and properties. An axi-symmetric heat transfer analysis is carried out to compute the temperature field. The computed thermal cycles are used to estimate the hardness distribution across the joint. The estimated thermal cycles and hardness distribution are tested with the corresponding experimentally measured results.

KEYWORDS:

• Friction hydro pillar processing
• steel
• heat transfer analysis
• hardness distribution
• friction welding
• numerical simulation

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the CNPq, Brazil and DST, India for carrying out part of this study under an India-Brazil collaborative research scheme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Buchibabu Vicharapu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2091-8022

Amitava De http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3109-261X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology: [Grant Number INT/BRAZIL/P-14/2013]; CNPq: [Grant Number 401014/2013-4].