Reversible inter-particle bonding in SPH for improved simulation of friction stir welding

Abstract

Friction stir welding (FSW) is a complex joining process which is governed by multiple intertwined physical phenomena. Besides friction, inelastic heat generation, and heat conduction, it involves high plastic deformations, resulting in a need for a numerical method being able to handle all these. Such a scheme is smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), which is a mesh-free computational technique. Absence of a fixed mesh results in the ability of the method to deal with another challenge of friction stir welding, a coalescence of initially separate workpieces into one due to bonding mechanisms. The background of this phenomenon is a transition from contact between two pieces to one continuum due to enormous changes in several material condition, such as temperature, pressure, strain, and strain rate. This work deals with a new development related to bonding, which will provide deeper understanding about the physical weld formation during FSW. The SPH framework must be extended to consider this bonding mechanism. This involves the bonding criterion definition, the interaction type change, and the SPH-SPH contact formulation. Then, the implementation is tested for two different examples, a compression test and FSW.