editorial advances in friction welding

EditorialAdvances in Friction Welding

Wenya Li,1 Achilleas Vairis,2 and R. Mark Ward3

1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Friction Welding Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering,Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710072, China

2Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Technology, TEI of Crete, P.O. Box 1939, Estavromenos, 71004 Heraklion, Greece3 School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

Correspondence should be addressed to Wenya Li; [email protected]

Received 3 June 2014; Accepted 3 June 2014; Published 3 July 2014

Copyright © 2014 Wenya Li et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative CommonsAttribution License, whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

There is a continual requirement to make things performbetter, be more predictably reliable, cost less, and use lessenergy.This often leads to requirements tomake componentsfor them that are complex shapes or that have propertiesthat vary from one location to another. These requirementsare often difficult or expensive to satisfy by conventionalmachining and mechanical processing, but joining allowsus to make complex shapes, potentially of materials withdifferent properties. The disadvantage is that, often, jointsrequire mass to be added to a design to carry the locallyincreased forces surrounding the joint. Alternatively the jointmust be prepared and produced very carefully and may stillhave properties below those of the parent material. Extramass or reduced properties (again requiring extra mass)increase the raw material costs and typically reduce theenergy efficiency of the final product.

Friction welding offers an extremely promising way tomake joints with minimal requirements for extra mass andwith extremely good final product properties showing verylow distortion. Particularly for metals appealing advantagesare the self-cleaning nature of the process as it expels surfacecontamination that might ultimately lead to, for example,fatigue damage in service and the avoidance of melting at thejoining interface which reduces metallurgical problems. Allprocesses, to varying degree of course, are very reliable andrepeatable, with few requirements in terms of nondestructivetesting usually.

Considerable work on friction welding has been under-taken at the Universities of Birmingham, Manchester, andCranfield, TWI (UK),Northwestern Polytechnical University

(China), Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland), Uni-versity of Johannesburg (South Africa), University of Ulsan(South Korea), and Universiti Malaysia Perlis (Malaysia),among others. Inertia and rotary friction welding have beenused since World War II in a wide range of applicationssuch as shafts and valves, while linear friction welds arealready being used in high performance parts in aircraftengines. The friction stir welding family of applications(friction stir welding, friction stir spot welding, friction stirprocessing, etc.) is used in the manufacture of structuresutilising aluminium alloy plates of every grade.

The seven papers in this special edition cover awide rangeof applications of the friction welding family ranging fromrotary/inertia and linear to stir and stir spot welding, as wellas friction stir processing.The topics of these papers are aboutdissimilar material joints, joint microstructure, mechanicalproperties, and various modelling techniques. We hope thatyou will find them useful in deciding how friction joining canbe used in your applications.

Wenya LiAchilleas VairisR. Mark Ward

Hindawi Publishing CorporationAdvances in Materials Science and EngineeringVolume 2014, Article ID 204515, 1 pagehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/204515

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