Effect of Alloy Type on Material Flow Dynamics during Friction Stir Welding

This dataset contains the video files and experimental details for the manuscript "Effect of Alloy Type on Material Flow Dynamics during Friction Stir Welding". The contrast in flow behavior amongst various aluminum alloys during friction stir welding has been a long-discussed phenomenon. Post-factum characterization and numerical simulations have paved the way for the development of hypotheses behind the difference in material flow dynamics across various aluminum alloys. However, the lack of in situ observations has limited the overall understanding of process physics. This study employs high-speed X-ray imaging performed at the Advanced Photon Source facility in Argonne National Laboratory to capture the process dynamics during FSW in situ. A high-intensity X-ray beam was used to image a 2 mm x 2 mm area at 20,000 frames per second. The friction stir tool made of H13 tool steel with threads and 3-flats on the probe was used to compare material flow in aluminum 6061-T6 and aluminum 7075-T6 workpieces. The density changes captured by the high-intensity X-ray beam show the formation and filling of cavities in the wake of the tool. Conditions producing fully consolidated and defected welds were compared. The difference in material flow and visco-plastic shearing is also observed in the two alloys.

The video file was processed using ImageJ software. The 3000 frames were imported as an image sequence using a virtual stacked mode.
The data was collected on 6/10/22 by Hemant Agiwal, Mohammad Ali Ansari, Daniel Franke, Patrick Faue, and Frank E. Pfefferkorn. Advanced Photon Source contacts: Samuel J. Clark, Alex Deriy, and Kamel Fezzaa This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The study was funded through the National Science Foundation (grant 1826104).