ABSTRACT
The present investigation includes the study of the Friction Stir Welding (FSW) of aluminum alloys in order to determine the optimum parameters of welding, such as tool rotation speed, tool materials and the number of passes needed to meet the objective of maximizing the hardness of the weld zone. A large number of interactions exist at different levels between the various parameters selected, so in order to perform the minimum amount of experimentation with optimum results, a Design of Experiments (DOE) approach was employed. In order to attain the target and optimize the results, Taguchi’s DOE approach and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed. After a literature survey, the appropriate orthogonal array L-9 was selected and the experimentation was performed at three levels. Following this, an experimentation analysis of the result was undertaken using Minitab 15 statistical software to find the effect of the variation and percentage contribution of each factor. The experimentation was carried out to maximize the hardness of the welded zone.
