CHAPTER I

1. INTRODUCTION:

Combination of mechanical properties of aluminium alloys such as durability, heat conductivity

and beneficial properties at low temperatures dictates its wide applications in air craft, transport,
pressure vessel and marine industries [1,2]. Recent advances in automobile industries are more
confined on light material applications because of challenges being imposed by fuel consumption
and pollution act. Added advantage of being cheaper and easy availability of aluminium and its
alloys compared to other non-ferrous materials becomes to stand as one of the unique materials
in automobile and aircraft industries. Furthermore, this is one of the most abundantly available
materials next to steel in the earth crust [3–10]. It is hardship to conceive any product without
weld joints in light metals. Manufacturability is one of the open end scenarios in production and
aluminium alloys are nothing to exception. The present investigation is based on two aluminium
alloys AA2124 and AA7075 which are widely used in air craft industries [11]. Pin hole porosity
formation, shrinkages, formations of blow holes, silicides, co-efficient of thermal expansion,
high thermal conductivity, dross forming tendency, high solidification temperature range and
solubility of hydrogen in molten state offers challenge to adopt fusion based welding of
aluminium alloys [12,13]. But few investigations have successfully reported that TIG can be
adopted for fabricating aluminium alloys. Thus, here an attempt