Investigating the Shear Strength of Friction Stir Lap Welded 7075 Aluminum Alloy

Creating melt joints in aluminum is an obstacle in introducing this metal into structures. This is due to the fact that fusion welding methods of aluminum leaves mechanical and metallurgical defects in the final produced parts. Friction stir welding is a non-melting replacement fabrication method, which creates welded joints from a semi-solid material state. In this paper, friction stir lap welding of 7075 aluminum alloy is studied both numerically and experimentally with the aim of investigating the shear strength of the welded joint. The shear strength which is calculated by the simulation is maximum 14 to 15 % lower to the acquired experimental results, which shows that the simulation process can appropriately be utilized to predict the shear strength of the welded joints for different cases. In addition, the results show that the maximum shear strength is equal to 165 Mpa which is obtained for a case in which the rotational speed is 1250 rpm, the linear speed is 50 mm/min and the tilt angle is set to 3˚.