Science and Technology of Welding and Joining

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Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir

welding

X. Qin & P. Michaleris

To cite this article: X. Qin & P. Michaleris (2009) Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of

friction stir welding, Science and Technology of Welding and Joining, 14:7, 640-649, DOI:
10.1179/136217109X12464549883457

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Published online: 04 Dec 2013.

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Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of
friction stir welding
X. Qin1 and P. Michaleris*2
A coupled two-dimensional Eulerian thermo-elasto-viscoplastic model has been developed for
modelling the friction stir welding process. First, a coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis is
performed to determine the temperature distribution in the full domain and the incompressible
material flow around the spinning tool. Next, an elasto-viscoplastic analysis is performed outside
the viscoplastic region to compute the residual stress. Both frictional heat and plastic deformation
heat generation are considered in the model. Furthermore, this is the only known model
computing residual stress accounting for plasticity caused by both thermal expansion and
mechanical deformation due to material spinning. The computed residual stress is verified by
comparing to experimentally measured data.
Keywords: Friction stir welding, Coupled thermomechanical analysis, Elasto-viscoplastic model, Eulerian analysis, Anand’s model, Residual stress

Introduction Owing to the difficulty of dealing with mesh distor-

Friction stir welding (FSW) is a new solid state joining
process invented in 1991 at The Welding Institute. A
non-consumable rotational cylindrical tool with a pin is
used to heat and soften the workpieces. The heat is
generated from two sources: the friction between the
tool and the workpieces and the plastic deformation of
the workpieces. The tool pin stirs the heated material
and joins two plates, which are aligned together and
clamped using fixtures. In general, it is expected that the
residual stress in a FSW welded plate is lower than in a
plate welded by traditional welding technology because
the highest temperature in FSW is lower. However,
recent publications indicate that the residual stress in
FSW may be comparable to those of gas metal arc
welding.1,2 Therefore, it is important to investigate the
residual stress in FSW.
Modelling of FSW poses a considerable challenge due
to the very large deformations involved in the process. If
a Lagrangian reference frame is implemented, the large
deformations result in severe mesh distortion and
entanglement, necessitating continuous adaptive re-
meshing,3 which, over time, will lead to numerical
errors. Typically, for problems exhibiting very large
deformations an arbitrary Lagrangia Eulerian (ALE)
approach is used instead of a pure Lagrangian to
minimise the error caused by mesh distortion.4–7 An
ALE scheme also allows the contact between the part
the tool to be described based on a Lagrangian frame
while maintaining a Eulerian description of the control
volume boundaries.
1
Dassault Systems Simulia Corp., 166 Valley Street, Providence, RI
02909, USA
2
Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, 232 Reber Building,
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
*Corresponding author, email pxm32@psu.edu
tion, most investigators using a Lagrangian modelling
approach ignore the material flow and instead assume
that residual stress and distortion in FSW are caused by
thermal expansion only.2,8–12 The temperature distribu-
tion is provided by either a pure conduction analysis
using a distributed heat input model2,8–12 or a thermal
transport analysis,13 which may account for the effect of
material flow on temperature distribution. These models
are similar to the elastoplastic models used in modelling
residual stress and distortion in arc welding. Their main
limitation is that they neglect the contribution of
spinning material flow in the residual stress forma-
tion, which produces an unsymmetric residual stress
distribution.1,2
The significant material deformation and entangle-
ment in FSW make a Eulerian reference frame a more
suitable alternative than a Lagrangian frame since in a
Eulerian frame, the material is not attached to the mesh
but it rather flows through it. Therefore, there is no issue
with mesh entanglement as in a Lagrangian mesh. Early
research using Eulerian frames for material processing
includes modelling drawing and rolling processes.14,15
The constitutive model used in an Eulerian model can
have a significant effect on the modelling effort. If a
history dependent response model is used such as an
elastoplastic or elasto-viscoplastic, it is necessary to
compute the deformation history of each particle in
order to determine stress and strain. This can be
accomplished by either computing the streamline of
each particle16–18 or by computing material evolution in
a weak finite element analysis (FEA) (mixed) formula-
tion.16,19,20 The streamline integration methods for
elastoplastic or elasto-viscoplastic models do not allow
for the computation of global algorithmic tangent
stiffness leading to convergence difficulties, while the
mixed FEA formulations lead to systems with large
number of degrees of freedom. Owing to these modelling

ß 2009 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining

Published by Maney on behalf of the Institute
Received 23 April 2009; accepted 2 June 2009
DOI 10.1179/136217109X12464549883457 Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 640
 Qin and Michaleris Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding

difficulties, most investigators neglect history evolution can be expressed by

in Eulerian models by assuming viscoplastic material
response.19,21 Such material models may be sufficient at s’ij ~2mDij (2)
high temperatures near the stirring zone. However, they and m is the viscosity of the material and Dij is the strain
are not appropriate for lower temperatures and result rate of the material flow, which can be obtained by
into zero residual stress distortion.
Qin and Michaleris20,22,23 have developed two 1
Dij ~ (Lij zLji ) (3)
Eulerian elasto-viscoplastic formulations. The first for- 2
mulation is based on the rate of equilibrium and the with Lij being the velocity gradient
second directly on the equilibrium equation. Both
formulations have been implemented in a two- Lvi
Lij ~ (4)
dimensional reference frame and have been verified by Lxj
comparing Lagrangian elastoplastic and Eulerian elasto- where v is the velocity.
viscoplastic results in arc welding. Although the
formulation based on the rate equilibrium equation is Incompressibility
easier to implement, the direct equilibrium equation uses For incompressibility, the trace of the strain rate tensor
conventional boundary conditions and accounts for is zero
temperature dependent material properties.
In the present study, a Eulerian thermo-elasto- trace(D)~Dii ~0 (5)
viscoplastic model is developed to compute residual
stress in FSW. The model accounts for plasticity caused
by both thermal expansion and mechanical deformation Internal variable evolution
due to material spinning. Because the temperature of the Anand’s constitutive model24 is used to describe the
material near the tool pin is close to its melting material hardening during the welding process by
temperature, the material in this region can be treated constitutive functions g(~s,s) and f(~
s,s) described in the
as an incompressible viscoplastic flow. Thus, a coupled section on ‘Friction stir welding model’.
thermo-viscoplastic analysis is performed in this region : ~
s~g(s,s) (6)
to provide thermal and velocity boundary conditions in
an elasto-viscoplastic analysis that is performed after-
wards. In the region outside the tool shoulder, the
material response is treated as elasto-viscoplastic and Energy balance equation
is modelled by the Anand’s constitutive law.24 The For a quasi-steady state problem in a Eulerian frame,
direct equilibrium Eulerian elasto-viscoplastic formula- the energy balance equation is expressed as26–29
tion23,25 is used in this work to predict the residual stress
LT Lqi
of FSW by coupling the velocity, deformation gradient, rCp vi ~{ zQ (7)
viscoplastic deformation gradient and internal variable Lxi Lxi
together. where r is the density of the material, Cp is the specific
heat capacity, T is the temperature, Q is the internal heat
Governing equations generation rate and qi is the heat flux vector.
In this work, two sets of governing equations are used Elasto-viscoplastic analysis
to simulate the FSW process. A coupled thermo- The velocity v, total deformation gradient F, viscoplastic
viscoplastic analysis is performed first to compute part of deformation gradient Fvp and internal variable s
temperature and material flow around the spinning tool. are solved simultaneously to compute residual stress in
An elasto-viscoplastic analysis is then performed to the elasto-viscoplastic analysis. The governing equations
predict the residual stress. The governing equations for for these variables are shown below.
the coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis and the elasto-
viscoplastic analysis are listed in this section. A detailed Equilibrium equation
presentation of the derivations and the numerical Similarly to the coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis,
implementation of the governing equations is available the equilibrium equation is
in Ref. 25. Lsij
~0 (8)
Coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis Lxi
Heat transfer and viscoplastic governing equations are In the elasto-viscoplastic analysis, a generalised
coupled to model temperature and material flow in a Maxwell-Voigt plasticity model (spring and damper in
Eulerian frame. series plus a damper in parallel) is used rather than the
typically used Maxwell model (spring and damper in
Equilibrium equation series).30 A Maxwell–Voigt model results in a positive
Assuming that the inertia terms and body forces are definite algorithmic tangent25 and provides a smooth
negligible, the momentum balance equation reduces to transition to a purely viscoplastic model as the elastic
the following equilibrium equation portion of the stress diminishes at high temperatures.
Lsij The Maxwell–Voigt plasticity model is verified in
~0 (1) modelling arc welding by comparing residual stresses
Lxi against a Maxwell in Ref. 25. A comparison between
where sij is the Cauchy stress tensor and x is the spacial Maxwell and Maxwell–Voigt rate dependent plasticity
coordinate. The viscoplastic stress–strain relationship models for HSLA-65 is given in Fig. 1. For strain rates

Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 641

 Qin and Michaleris Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding

1 Comparison of Maxwell M and Kelvin–Voigt K–V plasticity models for HSLA-65

up to 0?01 s21, the models are nearly identical. The Deformation gradient integration formulation
stress in a Maxwell–Voigt plasticity model is composed The deformation gradient F is integrated throughout the
by both elastic deformation and viscoplasic material domain as follows16
flow components as follows
: LFij
e
sij ~Cijkl Ekl z2mDij (9) Fij ~vk ~Lik Fkj (13)
Lxk
where, Cijkl is the fourth order isotropic elasticity tensor
and m is the viscosity. The elastic strain tensor Eije can be
derived by Viscoplastic deformation gradient integration
The viscoplastic portion of the deformation gradient Fvp
1

is integrated throughout the domain by
Eije ~ dij {Fkie {1 Fkje {1 (10)
2 vp
: LFij
The elastic part of deformation gradient tensor Fije in Fijvp ~vk ~Dvp vp
ik Fkj (14)
equation (10) can be obtained by the decomposition of Lxk
the total deformation gradient tensor Fij It is noted that, in equation (14), the skew symmetric
{1 {1 component of the plastic velocity gradient is omitted
Fije ~Fik Fklh Fljvp (11) since it is shown in Refs. 16 and 32 that the introduction
of an arbitrary skew symmetric component of the plastic
in which the thermal deformation gradient tensor can be
velocity gradient tensor does not affect the Cauchy stress
computed by31
for the material response as long as the remaining
Fijh ~u(h)dij (12) constitutive equations form an invariant.
The viscoplastic strain rate tensor Dvp
ij is computed as
The scalar n(h) is the thermal stretch ratio in any follows
material direction.  1=2
3 :
Dvp ~ ~e vp Nij (15)
ij
2
:
in which ~e vp is the equivalent viscoplastic strain rate
defined by the constitutive function f(s,s).~ Nij is the
direction of plastic flow tensor given by
:
~e vp ~f(s,s)
~ (16)

 1=2
3 s’ij
Nij ~ ~ (17)
2 s
2 Friction stir welding model ~ defined by
with the equivalent tensile stress s

Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 642

 Qin and Michaleris
3 Finite element mesh
 1=2
~ 3
s~ s’ij s’ij (18)
2
and the Cauchy stress deviator s’ij by
1 5 Elastic modulus E, Young’s modulus n and thermal
s’ij ~sij { skk dij (19)
3 expansion coefficient a assumed for HSLA-65
Internal variable evolution formulation
Similarly to the coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis the
internal variable evolution is
: Ls ~ illustrated in Fig. 3. It is composed of 4565 nodes and
s~vk ~g(s,s) (20)
Lxk
Coupled thermomechanical analysis of
FSW
Friction stir welding model
In this work, the FSW process described in Ref. 33 is
simulated using a two-dimensional FEA model in a
Eulerian reference frame (see Fig. 2). The material flows
through a fixed two-dimensional spacial domain with an
impenetrable circular region, which represents the tool
pin. The workpiece enters this domain from the inlet
surface at a speed of 2?54 mm s21 and leaves the domain
through the outlet surface. The radii of tool pin and tool
shoulder are Rpin53?5 mm and Rshoulder519 mm respec-
tively. Continuous contact between the workpiece and
the tool is assumed. The material is assumed to stick
with the tool pin and partially stick with the tool
shoulder in the region around the tool pin. Thus, a fixed
velocity boundary condition is applied around the tool
pin. To compute the residual stress, the length of the
spatial domain is set to be 2500 mm to let the
4 Conductivity k, specific heat Cp and air convection h
assumed for HSLA-65
Science and Technology of Welding and Joining
Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding
temperature cool down to room temperature at the
outlet surface. The tool spins clockwise at a rotational
speed of 750 rev min21. Therefore, the top half of the
region is the retreating side, and the bottom half of the
region is the advancing side. The finite element mesh is
3852 quadratic elements.
The thermal properties for HSLA-65 are assumed to
be the same as mild steel (A36) due to the low alloy
content of HSLA steels. They are illustrated in Fig. 4
and are obtained from Refs. 34 and 35. The elastic
properties are also assumed to be the same as mild steel
and are illustrated in Fig. 5.36–39
The Anand’s model24 can be used to simulate
temperature dependent material deformation with both
low and high strain rates.20 Therefore, both viscoplastic
and elasto-viscoplastic analysis adopt Anand’s model as
their constitutive law. The constitutive functions f(~
s,s)
in equation (16) is given by
  ~1=m
:
~e vp ~f(s,s)~A
~ s
sin h j (21)
s
where A5A0?exp(2i/RT), Q is the thermal activation
energy, R is the ideal gas constant and T is the absolute
temperature. A0, j and m are the material parameters
listed in Table 1. The material properties listed in
Table 1 are determined based on the experimental
stress–strain plot of the HSLA-65 steel shown in
Ref. 40. A comparison between experimental and com-
puted stress strain results for a 1023–1024 s21 strain rate
is listed in Fig. 6.
Table 1 Material parameters for HSLA-65 steel
Material parameter Value
A0 6?3461011 s21
Q 312?35 kJ mol21
j 3?25
R 8?314
m 0?1956
a 1?5
n 0?06869
s~ 125?1 MPa
s0 80 MPa
h0 3093?1 MPa
2009 VOL 14 NO 7 643
 Qin and Michaleris Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding

6 Experimental and computed stress–strain curves of HSLA-65 steel at different temperatures

The internal variable evolution equation (20), defined modulus, Poisson’s ratio and thermal expansion
s,s), is chosen to be24
by the function g(~ by temperature are plotted in Fig. 5

s a
s (iii) the strain rate of material flow in the elasto-
~ 
g(s,s)~h 0  1{   sign 1{  viscoplastic region is assumed to be much smaller
s s
than the strain rate in the viscoplastic region.
  ~1=m Thus, the effect of elasto-viscoplastic material
s flow on the results in the viscoplastic region is
A sin h j (22)
s negligible.
with Based on the above assumptions, the thermal analysis
: ! need to be coupled with the viscoplastic analysis only
~e vp n because the heat generated by plastic deformation in the
s ~s~

(23) elasto-viscoplastic region is negligible. Thus, the FSW
A
model can be solved in the following steps, as shown in
Fig. 7.
Solution method Step 1: Coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis for the
An in-house OMP Fortran 90 computer program is used full domain
to solve the FSW model. To simulate this FSW model, In the first step, the velocity v, pressure P, internal
the spacial domain is divided into two subdomains along variable s and temperature T are solved in the complete
the viscoplastic and elasto-viscoplastic (VP-EVP)
boundary (circle T) between the fixed velocity region
and the tool shoulder, as shown in Fig. 7. The region
between the VP-EVP boundary and the tool pin is the
viscoplastic region, and the region outside the VP-EVP
boundary is the elasto-viscoplastic region. In this
analysis, the following assumptions are introduced in
the model:
(i) the material in the viscoplasic region is con-
sidered to be incompressible and has only
viscoplastic response. Therefore, the elastic
deformation gradient Fe is identity in this region.
It is noted that viscoplastic material response is
temperature dependent due to the temperature
dependence of the activation energy in equa-
tion (21)
(ii) the material in the elasto-viscoplastic region is
compressible, and the material properties are
temperature dependent. The variation of elastic 7 Solution procedure

Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 644

 Qin and Michaleris Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding

domain using the fully coupled thermo-viscoplastic

analysis described in the section on ‘Coupled thermo- T~250 C (30)
viscoplastic analysis’.
Step 1?5: Transition step (ii) outlet boundary
Since the unknown variables are different between the vx ~vweld ~2:54 mm s{1 (31)
viscoplastic and elasto-viscoplastic analysis, a transition
step is needed to provide the necessary boundary
vy ~0 (32)
conditions for the elasto-viscoplastic analysis. Because
both analysis types solve for velocity and internal
variable, the results of these two unknown variables (iii) fixed velocity boundary (Rpin(r(Rfixed)
can be transferred from the viscoplastic analysis to the vfix ~(1{d)wr (33)
elasto-viscoplastic analysis directly. However, the visco-
plastic analysis cannot provide the boundary conditions vx ~vfix :sin a (34)
for the total deformation gradient F and viscoplastic
deformation gradient Fvp. The thermal deformation
vy ~{vfix :cos a (35)
gradient can be computed from the temperature results
by equation (12). Since the elastic deformation gradient
Fe is assumed to be identity, the total deformation (iv) the friction slip parameter d is42
 
gradient and visco-plastic deformation gradient on the 1 r
VP-EVP boundary can be given as d~1{exp { (36)
d0 Rpin
F ~I (24) with d050?4.42
Elasto-viscoplastic analysis
F vp ~F h{1 (25)
The temperature results of the coupled thermo-visco-
Step 2: Elasto-viscoplastic analysis for the EVP plastic analysis are applied as thermal loading to the
domain elasto-viscoplastic analysis. The boundary conditions
The second step is performed to compute the residual for the inlet and outlet surfaces are similar to the
stress by solving the velocity V, deformation gradient F, viscoplastic analysis and can be obtained by:
viscoplastic deformation gradient Fvp and internal (i) inlet boundary
variable s equations defined in the section on ‘Elasto-
F ~I (37)
viscoplastic analysis’. The temperature results of the first
step are used as thermal loads.
F vp ~I (38)
Boundary conditions
Since the coupled thermo-viscoplastic and elasto-visco- s~s0 ~80MPa (39)
plastic analysis solve for different unknown fields, their
boundary conditions are different. (ii) outlet boundary
Coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis vx ~vweld ~2:54 mm s{1 (40)
The heat generation of the FSW process consists of two
parts: frictional heat qfrictional generated between the tool vy ~0 (41)
and the workpieces and the heat generated by plastic
deformation qplastic. The surface frictional heat flux can At the VP-EVP boundary (curve T in Fig. 7), the
be expressed as41 velocity v, viscoplastic component of the defor-
mation gradient Fvp and internal variable s
2gmF v computed from the thermo-viscoplastic analysis
qfrictional ~gmpv~ r
60(R2shoulder {R2pin ) are applied as boundary conditions to the elasto-
viscoplastic analysis. Thus, introducing the
(Rpin ¡r¡Rshoulder ) (26) mechanical plasticity due to spinning in the
where g50?8 is the mechanical efficiency, m50?1 is the residual stress computation
friction coefficient, v578?6 rad s21 is the radial velocity v~vvp (42)
At node
and F56000 N and p are the force and pressure applied
by the tool shoulder. The heat generated by the plastic
F ~I (43)
flow can be calculated by
:
qplastic ~gs’ijevp
ij (27) F vp ~F h{1 (44)
The material is assumed to be undeformed on the inlet
boundary. Thus, the following boundary conditions are s~svp
At node (45)
applied to the viscoplastic analysis:
Results and discussion
(i) inlet boundary
Temperature and velocity from thermo-viscoplastic
P~0 MPa (28) analysis
Figure 8 shows the enlarged contour plot of the velocity
s~s0 ~80 MPa (29) norm around the tool pin. The velocity norm along the

Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 645

 Qin and Michaleris Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding

11 Contour plot of temperature results, uC

noted in Fig. 10 that the velocity norm in advancing side

8 Contour plot of velocity (mm s21, zoomed around tool is smaller than in the retreating side. This due to the fact
pin) that the direction of material flow in the advancing side
is against the tool spinning direction.
The temperature distribution is also asymmetric.
Figure 11 shows the contour plot of the temperature
results of the coupled thermo-viscoplastic analysis, and
Fig. 12 shows the enlarged temperature distribution
around the tool pin. The asymmetry temperature
distribution is prominent around the spinning tool
because the velocity change is large in this region. The
predicted highest temperature of the FSW model is
935uC around the tool pin and is in the advancing side.
This indicates that the combined effect of frictional heat
and the heat generated by plastic deformation soften the
specimens and heat the materials around the tool pin
without melting them.

Residual stress
Figure 13 shows the contour plot of the longitudinal
component (along the weld center line) of the computed
9 Plot of velocity stress. The asymmetric distribution of the stress can be
observed from the plot. Because the temperature around
the outlet surface drops down to the room temperature,
the computed stress at the outlet surface can be treated
as the residual stress.
The computed X component residual stress along the
outlet surface is plotted in line 1 of Fig. 14. The non-
symmetric distribution of the residual stress along the
outlet surface can be observed from this plot. Since a
two-dimensional mode is used in this work, the through
thickness material flow and residual stress distribution

10 Plot of velocity at fine scale

plot line P is plotted in Figs. 9 and 10. A finer scale is

used in Fig. 10 to illustrate magnitude of the velocity
beyond the tool vicinity. In Ref. 43, the authors
observed that the thickness of the rotational zone is
three times thicker than the distance that the pin moves
in one revolution, which is 1?14 mm in this case.
Figure 9 shows that the velocity decreases from
233 mm s21 to the weld velocity (2?54 mm s21) in a 12 Contour plot of temperature (uC, zoomed around tool
very thin region with less than 1?5 mm thickness. It also pin)

Science and Technology of Welding and Joining 2009 VOL 14 NO 7 646

 Qin and Michaleris
13 Contour plot of X component stress, MPa
cannot be computed. Therefore, the current two-
dimensional model is only an approximation to the
average through the thickness residual stress distribu-
tion. The measured longitudinal stress obtained in
Ref. 33 is also plotted in Fig. 14. The ‘*’ points and
the ‘#’ points are the measured residual stress on the
top and bottom surface of the plate respectively. The
averaged residual stress of the measured data is plotted
in line 4. By comparing the calculated results and the
measured data, the following can be concluded:
(i) the highest longitudinal residual stress for both
computed and measured results of FSW model is
in the advancing side
(ii) the difference between the highest compression
and tensile stress are higher in advancing side
than in retreating side
(iii) the highest compressive stress in advancing side
is 50 MPa higher than that of the retreating side.
Effect of spinning velocity on residual stress
Since this FSW model accounts for plasticity induced by
both thermal expansion and mechanical deformation
due to material spinning, FSW model is simulated under
different spinning velocities to investigate the effect of
spinning velocity on the residual stress distribution.
Because the spinning velocity can affect the amount of
the heat generated by the plastic flow, the heat generated
by plastic deformation for the case of 750 rev min21
spinning speed is applied to all the other cases to ensure
that the total heat input is the same among all cases. The
FSW model is performed using the following spinning
14 Longitudinal residual stress
Science and Technology of Welding and Joining
Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding
15 Effect of spinning velocity
velocities: no spinning (0 rev min21), 200, 400 and
750 rev min21. The longitudinal residual stress results
along the outlet surface are plotted in Fig. 15. The
asymmetry of the residual stress increases as the
spinning speed increasing from 0 to 400 rev min21.
However, the difference between the results with 400
and 750 rev min21 spinning speed is small. This
indicates that spinning of the tool causes the asymmetry
in the residual stress distribution. However, once the
rotation speed reaches a certain value, the degree of
asymmetry does not increase as the spinning speed
increase. Reynolds et al. also observed this phenomenon
in Ref. 44.
Effect of viscoplastic zone size
As shown in Fig. 7, the VP-EVP boundary is randomly
selected between the fixed velocity boundary and the
tool shoulder. It is necessary to investigate the influence
of the selection of the VP-EVP boundary on the residual
stress results. The longitudinal residual stress with
different sizes of viscoplastic region is plotted in
Fig. 16. As the radius of the viscoplastic region reduces
from 22 to 11 mm, the difference between the long-
itudinal residual stress becomes smaller. The residual
stress results with 11 mm (line 1) and 12 mm (line 2)
viscoplastic radius are almost the same. Thus, 11 mm
can be treated as the convergence radius, which indicates
16 Residual stress results with different viscoplastic zone
size
2009 VOL 14 NO 7 647
 Qin and Michaleris
17 Effect of viscoplastic zone size
that residual stress results would not change as the
viscoplastic radius becomes smaller than 11 mm. In
Fig. 17, the solid lines 1, 3 and 5 plot the residual stress
at retreating side points A (Y57 mm), B (Y596 mm)
and C (Y5228 mm) as the radius of VP-EVP region
changes from 11 to 22 mm. Similarly, the dashed lines 2,
4 and 6 plot the residual stress at A1 (Y527 mm), B1
(Y5296 mm) and C1 (Y52228 mm) in the advancing
side. It is noted that the advancing side has larger stress
gradient than the retreating side. The difference in
residual stress between the advancing side and retreating
side tends to decrease as the radius of VP-EVP region
increases. However, the change of the difference is very
small within 11 mm,RVP2EVP,17 mm. Thus, reliable
residual stress results can be obtained if the radius of
VP-EVP region satisfies 1/2(Rshoulder2Rpin),RVP2EVP,
3/4(Rshoulder2Rpin).
Conclusions
A two-dimensional coupled thermo-elasto-viscoplastic
FSW model has been presented in this paper. Both
frictional heat and plastic deformation heat generation
are considered in the model. Currently, this is the only
known model that is capable of computing residual
stress accounting for plasticity caused by both thermal
expansion and mechanical deformation due to material
spinning. The calculated residual stress results are
compared with measured data, and good agreement is
obtained. Based on the simulation results, the following
conclusions can be drawn.
1. The proposed coupled thermo-viscoplastic model
can simulate temperature and material flow. The
temperature and velocity distribution is non-symmetric.
The highest temperature is around the tool pin and in
the advancing side.
2. The model is able to accurately compute the non-
symmetric residual stress distribution of FSW.
3. The highest tensile and compressive longitudinal
residual stress are in the advancing side. Thus, the advancing
side has higher stress gradient than retreating side.
Since the numerical implementation in this work is
two-dimensional, the through thickness material flow
and residual stress distribution cannot be computed.
Therefore, the current two-dimensional model is only an
approximation to the average through the thickness
residual stress distribution. Extension of proposed thermo-
elasto-viscoplastic method into a three-dimensional
Science and Technology of Welding and Joining
Themo-elasto-viscoplastic modelling of friction stir welding
implementation will enable evaluating the effects of tool
geometry and through thickness material movement in
the residual stress formation in FSW.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the funding
from Office of Naval Research, award number
N000140410175 and programme manager Johnnie
DeLoach.
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