A. Mohassel, A. H. Kokabi, P. Davami,
Volume 8, Issue 4 (december 2011)
Abstract
The wide-gap aluminothermic rail welds with root opening of 50-70 mm were produced using plain carbon steel rail and non-alloy aluminothermic charge. Mechanical properties and micro-structure of the weld metal and HAZ as well as the impact energy and the fracture toughness of the welds were investigated. The yield and tensile strength of wide-gap welds were about 98% and 95% of the base metal, respectively. Both minimum and maximum hardnesses of the joint were seen in HAZ which were related to the grain coarsening and normalizing, respectively. The mean value of wide-gap weld fracture toughness is more than narrow-gap weld. Moreover, trans-granular cleavage indicated the brittle fracture mode of the weld metal.
Mahdi Alishavandi, Mahnam Ebadi, Amir Hossein Kokabi,
Volume 18, Issue 2 (June 2021)
Abstract
Friction-Stir Processing (FSP) was applied on AA1050 Aluminum Alloy (AA) to find the highest mechanical properties among 28 combinations of the rotational and traverse speed (800-2000 rpm and 50-200 mm.min-1) and four different tool probe shapes (threaded, columnar, square and triangle). To this aim, the AA standard sheet went through a single pass of FSP. The 1600 rpm and 100 mm.min-1 with threaded tool probe was chosen as the best combination of rotational and traverse speed. Grain size at the Stirred Zone (SZ) was studied using Optical Microscopy (OM). The results showed that the SZ’s grain size was refined from 30 μm down to about 12 μm due to dynamic recrystallization during FSP. The processed sample exhibited improved hardness, yield stress, ultimate tensile strength, elongation up to 65, 80, 66, and 14%, respectively, compared to the annealed AA sample. Studying fractographic features by OM and field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) revealed a dominantly ductile fracture behavior.
