FSW of extruded and additively manufactured parts for automotive components

The increasing production of hybrid electric vehicles draws the attention to the importance of lightweight structures and energy storage improvement. These objectives are pursued by using dissimilar aluminum alloys and customized parts, provided by different manufacturing processes, including additive manufacturing. This leads to the need of improving the joining procedure in challenging situations. The replacement of the traditional welding process, with a setup suitable for FSW, is investigated by this research study. An industrial component to be assembled was chosen, an extruded AA6063-T6 workpiece, which was welded to an AlSi10Mg 3D printed item. Different welding conditions were considered and investigated through metallography inspections and mechanical tests of the joints. All the tested welding showed a good quality proved by the stability of the tensile tests and the consistency of the microhardness measurements. The SEM analysis showed an optimal mixing. The promising results reported encourage for continuing in an industrialization perspective.