Abstract
This paper describes the application of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT, to modelling the metal flow in friction stir welding (FSW). Through the use of a novel slip model, a two-dimensional pin profile was optimised to minimise the traversing force. Two versions of a tool based on the optimised profile were developed: the plain ‘Trivex’ and the threaded ‘MX-Trivex’. These were tested against one version of the ‘MX-Triflute’ tool that had comparable pin and shoulder diameters. Experiments showed that the traversing force was reduced by between 18 and 25% and the down force was reduced by approximately 12% when compared with the MX-Triflute tool. The different pin designs had little effect on the heat input and the tensile strengths of the welds were comparable. The development and validation of the full three-dimensional model for both the Trivex and Triflute tools is described in Part 2.
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