ABSTRACT
In recent years, weight factor plays an important role in the manufacturing of aircraft, automobile and aerospace engineering in order to provide low fuel consumption and safety to the passengers. Engineers are working on the structural design of vehicles from small size fasteners to large size components in order to reduce the weight of existing designs. The first choice of the designer is aluminium material, which governs the lightweight production and reduces weight up to 50%. Aluminium alloys fascinate the manufacturers to facilitate lightweight, high strength and comfortable usage conditions. These alloys were used in the fabrication of aircraft parts such as wings, fuselage and main gear landing (MLG) links. There are plenty of welding processes available for fabrication work. Nevertheless, importance was given to the strength of the weld joint. Fusion welding causes the essential elements present in the aluminium alloy to evaporate due to the heat involved in the process. It causes high residual stress and hot cracking, which makes the weld joint lose its strength. Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a developing environment-friendly welding technology in which the parent material was subjected to plastic deformation without melting. The quality of the FSW joints depends upon the process parameters, such as tool rotational speed, tool hardness, tool shoulder diameter, tool pin diameter, tool tilt angle, welding speed and tool offset. Therefore, significant research work is essential to optimize the FSW parameters and evaluate the mechanical properties and microstructural behaviour of aluminium alloy joint. In this chapter, based on the above mentioned factors, a literature survey has been made to benefit the academicians, researchers and industry experts working in the FSW process.
