TENSILE PROPERTIES OF SIMILAR AISI 304 AUSTENITIC AND AISI 430 FERRITIC STAINLESS STEELS JOINED BY FRICTION WELDING

Friction welding is a solid state bonding process, where the joint between two metals has been established without melting the metal. The relative motion between the faying surfaces (surfaces to be joined) under the application of pressure promotes surface interaction, friction and heat generation which subsequently results in joint formation. Stainless steel is an iron based alloy, contains various combinations of other elements to give desired characteristics, and found a wider range of applications in the areas such as petro-chemical, fertilizer, automotive, food processing, cryogenic, nuclear and beverage sectors. In order to exploit the complete advantages of stainless steels, suitable joining techniques are highly demanded. The Friction welding is an easily integrated welding method of stainless steel, which considered as non-weldable through fusion welding. Grain coarsening, creep failure and failure at heat-affected zone are the major limitations of fusion welding of similar stainless steels. Friction welding eliminates such pitfalls. In the present work an attempt is made to investigate experimentally, the mechanical and metallurgical properties of friction welded joints, namely, austenitic stainless steel (AISI 304) and ferritic stainless steel (AISI 430). Evaluation of the characteristics of welded similar stainless steel joints are carried out through tensile test, hardness measurement and metallurgical investigations.