Hybrid joints of die-casted aluminum/magnesium by ultrasound enhanced friction stir welding (USE-FSW)

As consistent lightweight construction nowadays becomes more and more important in smart production processes, the demand for joints of dissimilar materials increases steadily due to their variety of advantages in engineering. Friction stir welding (FSW) is an innovative pressure welding technique, which offers the ability to realize such dissimilar joints while achieving high tensile strengths. Furthermore, it has been proved that ultrasound enhanced friction stir welding (USE-FSW) has an additional positive effect on the joint strength of these compounds due to the additional introduction of mechanical energy into the joining zone through influencing the formation of brittle intermetallic phase (IMP) and particle allocation in the weld nugget. In this paper, the influence of power ultrasound introduction via USE-FSW on hybrid joints of industrially die-cast aluminum alloy EN AC-48000 (AlSi12CuNiMg) and magnesium alloy AZ91 (MgAl9Zn1) has been investigated. Besides mechanical testing, light microscopic and scanning electron microscopic investigations (SEM) as well as differential scanning calorimetry have been conducted. Furthermore, corrosion behavior of the base material and X-ray radiographic images of FSW and USE-FSW joints have been examined. Additionally, the influence of different ultrasound powers and changes in the introduction side on the tensile strength and microstructure of the joints has been investigated.