Abstract:
The linear friction welding process is rapidly developing into an important
manufacturing technology for high quality joining of engineering materials. The
energy required for linear friction welding is an important issue due to
economic and environmental reasons, but is not currently fully understood. This
paper describes a comprehensive evaluation of the energy input during linear
friction welding of a medium carbon steel with different process parameters.
This calculation is based on an analysis of force and displacement data from the
machine, which takes momentum into account. The analysis shows that energy input
to the weld is minimised with high frequencies and rubbing velocities; however,
there is a considerable amount of energy lost in oscillating the machine tooling
under these conditions. Furthermore, analysis of the force indicates that a peak
load occurs just before the samples being aligned, which is probably caused by
ploughing of the samples during welding.