Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

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Friction stir welding of small-dimension Al3003 and pure Cu pipes

Binxi Chen a,b , Ke Chen a,b,∗ , Wei Hao a,b , Zhiyuan Liang a,b , Junshan Yao c ,
Lanting Zhang a,b , Aidang Shan a,b
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
b
Shanghai Key Laboratory for High Temperature Materials and Precision Forming, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
c
Special Welding Technology Center, Shanghai Aerospace Equipment Manufacturer, Shanghai 200245, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Small-dimension Al3003 pipe and pure copper pipe of thin wall (Al: 1.5 mm; Cu: 1 mm) and small diam-
Received 11 October 2014 eter (19 mm) were successfully joined by a developed welding method with a specially-designed friction
Received in revised form 26 February 2015 stir welding (FSW) system. A distinctive temperature history due to heat accumulation was identified
Accepted 26 March 2015
as an important feature for FSW of small-dimension pipes, leading to distinctive variations of surface
Available online 7 April 2015
condition, macro-/micro-structure along the circumferential weld seam. Hardness distribution, tensile
strength, ductility and fracture modes were found to change correspondingly along the weld seam.
Keywords:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Friction stir welding
Pipe welding
Dissimilar materials
Welding temperature
Microstructure
Mechanical properties

1. Introduction welding speed (150 mm/min). Therefore, the formation of IMCs is

Copper (Cu) is one of the most important metals and is widely
used in industry (Lipowsky and Arpaci, 2008). The fast increase of
its price calls for its replacement by the cheaper substitutes in order
to save the cost (Weigl et al., 2011). Aluminum (Al) and Al alloys
are considered as ideal candidates not only because their prices
and densities are lower than Cu but also they share similarity with
Cu in mechanical properties and electric properties (Miller et al.,
2000). Reliable and efficient joining between Cu and Al is therefore
essential and has drawn considerable attention. Fusion welding
techniques, such as brazing (Koyama et al., 2002) and laser weld-
ing (Mai and Spowage, 2004), were used to join these two metals.
Koyama et al. (2002) used Al Si Mg Bi brazing alloy to join Al
and Cu by vacuum brazing. Massive Al2 Cu and Al2 Cu3 formed in the
joints reduced the tensile strength. Fracture preferentially occurred
in these intermetallic compound (IMC) layers (70% in Al2 Cu). Mai
and Spowage (2004) characterized dissimilar joints in laser weld-
ing of Al4047 and Cu and reported that the fusion zone mainly
consisted of brittle IMCs which induced solidification cracks at high
∗ Corresponding author at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, Rm 407, Materials Building A, 800 Dongchuan Rd, Minhang
District, Shanghai 200240, China. Tel.: +86 21 54748974.
E-mail addresses: chenke83@sjtu.edu.cn, chenke83@gmail.com (K. Chen).
difficult to control during fusion welding, which inevitably weakens
the mechanical properties of joints.
In solid state welding, the formation of IMCs can be well con-
trolled by avoiding the melting of materials and controlling heat
input, resulting in an improved mechanical property. Thus, solid
state welding methods are more feasible solutions for welding Al
and Cu. Friction stir welding (FSW) is a fast developing solid state
joining technique since it was invented in 1991 (Thomas et al.,
1991), although several disadvantages have been identified, such
as keyhole left after withdrawing the tool, large downward force,
heavy-duty clamping required, and less flexibility and slower trav-
erse rate than some fusion welding techniques. Many previous
studies have reported that sound and defect-free Al to Cu joints
with good mechanical properties can be obtained via FSW. Liu et al.
(2008) reported that the tensile strength of the FSW joint between
T2 Cu and Al5A06 reached 100% of Cu and 94% of 5A06. Fotoohi
et al. (2013) investigated the butt joining of Al5083 to commer-
cially pure Cu via FSW and reported the ultimate tensile strength
(UTS) of joints close to 96% of the Cu.
In recent years, most studies of FSW between Al and Cu focused
on the effects of welding parameters on mechanical properties of
the joints and the formation of IMCs. By studying the influence
of the fixed location, pin offset and tool rotation rate (TRR) on
the microstructure and mechanical properties of the joints, Xue
et al. (2011) concluded that sound and defect-free joints could be

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2015.03.044
0924-0136/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57
produced only when Cu was placed at the advancing side (AS)
and tensile properties of the joint were poor when pin offset was
too large and/or TRR was too low due to insufficient reaction
between the Cu bulk/pieces and Al matrix. Bisadi et al. (2013) stud-
ied the effect of TRR and welding speed on the microstructures and
mechanical properties in friction stir lap welded Al5083 and com-
mercially pure Cu joints and concluded that joint defects formed at
either very low or extremely high welding temperature. Esmaeili
et al. (2011) found that the gradual formation of IMC during FSW of
brass and Al1050 was initiated at the interface, followed by thicken-
ing and development of IMC layers consisted of Al2 Cu and Al4 Cu9
with further increase of rotation speed. Xue et al. (2010) investi-
gated the effect of the thin IMC layers on mechanical properties of
Al/Cu FSW joint. They reported that excellent metallurgical bond-
ing with a bonding strength higher than 210 MPa was produced at
the Al/Cu interface due to the formation of continuous and uniform
Al-Cu IMC layer with a proper thickness of ∼1 ␮m.
Besides, most of previous researches on FSW focused on butt
or lap welding of flat-surface sheets or plates. There were only a
very limited number of studies on the joining of pipes. Lammlein
et al. (2012) presented a FSW process method for joining Al-
6061T6 pipes with a diameter of 107 mm and a wall thickness of
5 mm; high-strength pipe joints with sound internal and superficial
appearance were obtained successfully. Doos and Wahab (2012)
studied the feasibility of welding Al pipes by FSW and obtained a
maximum weld strength of 179 MPa with a weld efficiency of 61.7%.
Furthermore, Packer and Matsunaga (2004) developed FSW equip-
ment and process method for joining X65 pipes (outer diameter:
324 mm) and successfully obtained fully consolidated weld joint
with superior tensile and impact properties. Peterson et al. (2011)
also reported a system for FSW of small diameter tubes or pipes.
Different from above mentioned studies, welding between
small-dimension pipes of dissimilar materials and with different
geometries was studied in this research, namely, Al3003 alloy and
pure Cu pipes with small diameter (19 mm) and thin wall (1 mm for
Cu and 1.5 mm for Al3003). The technology of welding Al pipes to
Cu pipes has potential application in heating and air-conditioning
systems, where Cu pipes are currently used extensively. The partial
replacement of Cu pipes by Al pipes enabled by this technology can
significantly reduce the cost of material. There are several unique
challenges in developing this technology. First, dissimilar FSW of Al
and Cu is difficult because of their large difference in physical prop-
erties. For example, the melting temperature of Cu is nearly 400 K
higher than Al. Second, the highly curved surface of the circumfer-
ential welding seam suggests that the interaction between the FSW
tool and pipes is very different from the case in flat-surface welding.
Hence, the material flow during welding should be also quite dis-
tinct. Third, the thin wall (∼1 mm) of the pipes results in a challenge
in process control and requires a high controlling accuracy. In order
to deal with these challenges, a welding method was developed and
a welding system was designed and fabricated accordingly. Using
this welding system, successful joining between Al and Cu pipes
was obtained. A key feature found for this welding method is the
distinct variation of welding temperature, macro-/micro-structure
and mechanical properties along the circumferential weld seam.
This paper introduces the welding method, presents this feature
and discusses its formation.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials and FSW tool
Al3003 alloy pipes and pure Cu pipes with an outer diameter
of 19 mm were used in this study. Wall thicknesses of the Al pipes
was 1.5 mm while that of Cu pipes 1 mm. Chemical composition of
49
Table 1
Chemical composition of Al3003 alloy (mass %).
Material Al Mn Fe Si Cu Zn
Al alloy Balance 1.0–1.5 <0.7 <0.6 0.05–0.2 <0.1
Al pipes is listed in Table 1. The UTS of Al and Cu base metals were
197 MPa and 315 MPa, respectively. A FSW tool made of H13 steel
with concave shoulder (10◦ ) and cylindrical pin was used. Shoulder
diameter (SD) was 6 mm, pin diameter (PD) 2 mm and pin length
(PL) 0.7 mm.
2.2. Welding
The welding system and the schematic diagram of the welding
are shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b), respectively. This welding system
is very different from that used for butt or lap FSW of flat plates.
Instead of a backing plate used in FSW of flat plates, a fixture was
specially designed (as shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b)) for the FSW of
small diameter and thin wall pipes. In order to fix the pipes dur-
ing welding, a pair of expandable inner mandrels (EIM) were used,
similar to the corresponding part of the welding system for larger
diameter pipes (107 mm) in Lammlein et al.’s (2012) work. After
fixing the pipes on the fixture, they were placed on the supporting
seats and clamped by the driving head. The Cu pipes were placed to
the AS in this study. The welding tool was offset in two directions,
Offset1 (O1) and Offset2 (O2), as shown schematically in Fig. 1(c)
and (d). O1 is parallel to x-axis, which offset the tool to Al side.
O2 is parallel to y-axis (perpendicular to O1 direction), which was
applied for obtaining a “tilt angle”, similar to that in FSW of flat
plates. As schematically shown in Fig. 1(d), ID is the height differ-
ence (along z-axis) between the top of the pipes and the tip of the
pin after the insertion of the tool. Its optimal value was found to be
closely related to O2. Other important welding parameters include
TRR and pipe rotation rate (PRR), as shown in Fig. 1(b).
The welding started with the rotation of the tool at a pre-set
TRR. The tool was then inserted into the pipes to a fixed ID. After
several seconds of dwell time, the pipes were driven by the driving
head to rotate at a pre-set PRR. The circumferential welding can
be finished by 360◦ rotation of the pipes. However, in our current
study, the pipes rotated 400◦ rather than 360◦ , which means that
there was a 40-deg. overlap region. The reason for such a setting
will be explained later. After the circumferential welding, the tool
was lifted up, shifted to zero O2, and re-inserted into the pipes to
perform a linear welding with the tool traversing in the direction
of x-axis. The whole welding procedure was finished by leaving the
keyhole in the thicker Al side.
Using different combinations of parameters, a large number of
test welding have been conducted. A common feature was found
that weld surface finish, macro-/micro-structure and mechanical
properties vary along the circumferential weld seam. In order to
present this critical feature, a typical welded joint is selected with
the values of the dominant welding parameters listed in Table 2.
Other secondary welding parameters, such as dwell time and trav-
erse distance in linear welding, were not as dominant as those
parameters listed in Table 2 and therefore not considered in this
study.
2.3. Temperature measurement
The objective of temperature measurement in the current study
was to find the welding temperature variation rather than accurate
temperature values. Even through welding temperature is com-
monly measured by thermocouples embedded into the workpieces,
this technique cannot record the temperature of the welding zone
50 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57

Fig. 1. The welding system: (a) the setting for pipe welding; (b) schematic diagram of the welding parameters; (c) schematic diagram showing O1; (d) schematic diagram
showing O2. (PRS stands for pipe rotation rate; TRR for tool rotation rate; O1 for offset1; O2 for offset2; ID for insertion depth).

Table 2 2.4. Mechanical property testing and metallographic sample

Welding parameters.
preparation
Welding parameter TRR PRR O1 O2 ID

Unit rpm rpm mm mm
Value 2400 2 1.3 1.5
due to the fixed locations of thermocouples. By contrast, thermal
infrared camera can conveniently record the temperature of the
welding zone continuously. Therefore, a thermal infrared camera
(FLIR A615) with 50 Hz of sampling frequency was used to mea-
sure the welding temperature in this study. The camera forms
thermal image by detecting infrared radiation which is related to
the temperature of the object. The resolution of this camera is
640 × 480 pixel which means the spatial resolution is about 0.3 mm.
The surface conditions were not carefully calibrated for the temper-
ature measurement. However, the deviation should be within 10%.
The peak surface temperature of the pipes in front of the tool was
recorded to show the variation of the welding temperature dur-
ing FSW. It is worth noticing that the peak temperature obtained
from the thermal imager is not the actual peak welding tempera-
ture and it can be much lower than the temperature near the tool,
since the temperature gradient of the materials in front of the tool
was reported to be large (Song and Kovacevic, 2003).
mm Longitudinal tensile specimens were cut from the welded pipe
1.45 joint according to ASTM E8/E8M-11 (2004) as schematically shown
in Fig. 2(a). The dimensions for the cut specimens are given in
Fig. 2(b). Based on the measured peak welding temperature vari-
ation (given later in Fig. 3), four specimens (Fig. 2(c)) were sliced
from different positions of the welded pipe. Tensile tests were con-
ducted on a ZWick testing machine (BTC-T1-FR020 TN.A50) with
grips having surface contour corresponding to the curvature of the
pipes, at a crosshead speed of 1 mm/min. Because the thicknesses
of two pipes were different, force instead of stress was used as the
indicator for tensile strength.
As shown in Fig. 2(d), four specimens were cut from the cir-
cumferential seam for macro-/micro-structural characterization
and hardness testing of each regions (FR, MR, LR and OR). Their
cross sections were mechanically polished and observed. How-
ever, due to the short length of OR, there was not enough weld
seam remained for metallographic study after taking the tensile
specimen. Furthermore, cross section of the OR specimen showed
an obvious influence from the final linear welding. Therefore,
macro-/micro-structure and hardness of OR were not presented
 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57
Fig. 2. (a) Schematic diagram showing how the tensile specimens were cut from the joint; (b) dimension of tensile specimens; (c) obtained tensile specimens; and (d)
schematic diagram of weld region division.
Fig. 3. Peak welding temperature variation of the weld seam surface (FR: former
region; MR: middle region; LR: later region; OR: overlap region).
in the following sections. Hardness testing was carried out using a
Zwick/Roll hardness tester with 100 g load and 10s holding time. A
FEI scanning electron microscope (Sirion 200) was used in backscat-
tered electron imaging (BEI) mode and operating at an accelerating
voltage of 5 kV. For optical microscopy (OM), a Leica optical micro-
scope (DM4000) was utilized and the samples were etched by a
solution consisted of 10 g NaOH and 50 ml H2 O for 20 s.
3. Results
Using the welding system developed in this study (Fig. 1),
Al3003 and Cu pipes were successfully welded with the parameters
51
given in Table 2. The welding temperature, weld surface, macro-
/micro-structure, and the mechanical properties of the pipe
joint were studied in order to understand the feature of this
method.
3.1. Welding temperature
Fig. 3 shows the variation of the peak surface temperature along
the weld seam measured by the thermal infrared camera. During
the tool insertion into the pipes, the temperature increased at a very
high rate (∼100 ◦ C/s) and reached over 200 ◦ C before the start of cir-
cumferential welding. As the pipes rotated from 0◦ to ∼220◦ , the
temperature increased at a relative steady rate (about 3 ◦ C/s) with
some small fluctuations. In the last 40◦ of circumferential welding,
there was a declining stage from ∼250 ◦ C to ∼220 ◦ C. After that,
temperature decreased and rose back quickly when the tool was
extracted from and re-inserted into the pipes. The welding tem-
perature maintained at about 200 ◦ C during the linear welding and
finally decreased to room temperature slowly after the welding was
finished.
Based on this featured welding temperature history, the whole
weld seam were divided into four regions as shown in Fig. 2(d),
in order to better study the macro-/micro-structural variation and
the associated variations in mechanical properties. The extra 40-
deg. rotation of pipes after a complete turn generated the overlap
region (OR). For the OR, the initial 40-deg. rotation of the circum-
ferential welding (1st pass) was overlapped by the welding of the
final 40-deg. rotation (2nd pass). OR is followed by former region
(FR). For the FR, pipes rotated 90◦ and peak welding temperature
increased from ∼200 ◦ C to ∼230 ◦ C (Fig. 3). The following region is
designated as middle region (MR), where the peak welding temper-
ature was measured to increase another ∼30◦ during 90-deg. pipe
rotation (Fig. 3). In the later region (LR), the peak welding tempera-
ture was relatively stable at around 260 ◦ C (Fig. 3). The locations of
52 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57

Fig. 4. Surface variation along the circumferential weld seam: (a) FR; (b) MR; (c) LR; (d) OR (refer to Fig. 3(d) for the locations of these regions).

these four regions along the circumferential weld seam are shown
schematically in Fig. 2(d).
3.2. Weld surface variation
The weld surfaces of the four regions (FR, MR, LR, and OR)
showed certain differences (Fig. 4). Even though FR, MR, and LR
were all defect-free, the side flash increased and became more con-
tinuous from FR to LR. OR is the region experienced 2 passes of
welding. Such an overlap welding was intentionally performed in
order to remove the defects formed in the initial region of weld
seam, because weld defects were found to form most easily during
the initial ∼40◦ of pipe rotation. In OR (Fig. 4(d)), it can be seen that
the weld defect was not eliminated completely. Such a weld sur-
face variation suggests that a steady-state welding was not reached
during the welding of small-dimension pipes and the welding con-
dition/conditions were varying during the welding even though the
welding parameters were fixed. Such a change in the weld sur-
face should be attributed to the variation of welding temperature
(Fig. 3).
3.3. Macro-/micro-structure variation
Not only the surface conditions changed along weld seam, but
also the macrostructure (FR, MR and LR) were different, as shown
in Fig. 5. First of all, thickness reduction for Al3003 increased from
∼25% to ∼40% from FR to LR. Second, the tilting orientation of the
Al bulk/Cu bulk interface is different in the three regions. In FR,
the interface was ∼45◦ tilted to the surface of pipes. However, in
MR and LR, the Al bulk/Cu bulk interfaces were both relatively ver-
tical and close to the initial faying surface (marked by dash line).
Finally, only in the nugget of FR were large Cu pieces and defects
observed.
Microstructure of similar locations for those three regions was
further studied. The locations were all close to the Al bulk/Cu bulk
interfaces, as marked by yellow arrows in Fig. 5. In FR (Fig. 6(a)), it
was found that a large number of Cu lamellae (thickness <5 ␮m)
were embedded in Al matrix. The Cu lamellar were strongly
deformed and some of them enwrapped the second phase par-
ticles (SPP) of Al3003 base metal. Surrounding the Cu lamellae,
thin gray IMC layers (thickness <1 ␮m) can be found, similar to

Fig. 5. Optical images of the cross-sections of FR, MR and LR. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57 53

Fig. 6. SEM images of the stir zone near the Al/Cu interface in 4 regions with the locations marked in Fig. 5 by red rectangles: (a) FR, (b) MR, and (c) LR. (For interpretation of
the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

previous observation made by Galvão et al. (2012) that Al2 Cu Table 3

EDS results (at.%) for the measurements marked in Fig. 7.
and Al4 Cu9 formed in the mixed zone. These microstructures
shown in Fig. 6(a) can be regarded as laminated composites with Position P1 P2 P3 P4
Al3003 matrix enhanced by Cu lamellae and the surrounding IMC Al (K) 2.69 69.08 60.36 78.47
Cu (K) 97.31 30.92 39.64 21.00
Mn (K) 0 0 0 0.53
Phases Cu Al2 Cu Al2 Cu + Cu Al2 Cu + Al

layers. In MR (Fig. 6(b)), only a few Cu fragments surrounded by

Fig. 7. Intermetallics around Cu pieces in MR, with the EDS tested at 4 positions.
EDS results are shown in Table 3.
IMCs and SPP of Al3003 were observed in the Al matrix. However,
very few Cu pieces/IMCs could be found in LR (Fig. 6(c)) and this
microstructure was very similar to Al3003 base metal (mainly Al
and irregular shaped micro-scale SPP).
Detailed EDS analysis was performed on a large Cu piece and
the surrounding IMCs in the weld nugget of MR. Positions investi-
gated are marked in Fig. 7 and the results are shown in Table 3. P1
showing bright contrast was proven to be Cu. The composition of P2
(69.08 at.% Al and 30.92 at.% Cu) was very close to that of Al2 Cu. The
grey region embedded between two Cu lamellar (P3) was found to
be lightly rich in Cu (39.64 at.%) compared with the stoichiometric
composition of Al2 Cu (33.33 at.% Cu). It suggested a combination
of Al2 Cu and a few Cu in P3 because P3 was located between two
Cu lamellae. Likewise, the result of P4 suggested a combination of
Al2 Cu and Al phases because P4 was located in the IMC particle
surrounded by the Al matrix. Therefore, Al2 Cu is possibly the main
IMC phase in the laminated composites.
54 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57
4. Variation of mechanical properties
4.1. Microhardness
Fig. 8 shows Vickers micro-hardness distributions along the
middle height line (marked by red arrows in Fig. 5) of the metallo-
graphic cross-sections of FR, MR, and LR. Outside the intermixing
nugget, hardness distributions of all the three regions were simi-
lar as shown in Fig. 8(a). Hardness of Cu decreased gradually from
∼130 HV to ∼100 HV at AS and that of Al3003 from ∼60 HV to less
than 50 HV at RS, respectively. Such a variation was most possibly
due to the effect of welding thermal cycle. Inside the intermixing
nugget, hardness distributions of the three regions were quite dif-
ferent. As shown in Fig. 8(b), there were two hardness peaks in
FR and the one near Al bulk/Cu bulk interface showed a hardness
Fig. 8. Hardness distributions at the middle thickness along the horizontal dash lines
in the cross sections shown as insets for each region: (a) overlap of all distributions;
distribution for (b) FR; (c) MR; (d) LR.
of 228 HV which was much higher than the hardness of base Cu.
Besides the two peaks, small fluctuation between ∼50 HV and
∼90 HV was observed. As shown in Fig. 8(d), fluctuation was also
found in LR with an obvious trough reaching a hardness value sim-
ilar to Al3003 base metal. However, the hardness in the nugget of
MR was relatively steady, varying in a small range of 80–90 HV as
shown in Fig. 8(c).
The highest hardness peak in FR corresponded to the region
with a microstructure similar to that shown in Fig. 6(a), contain-
ing high density of Cu lamellar and IMCs. Tan et al. (2013) also
observed a hardness peak that reached 195.3HV in the nugget near
the Al bulk/Cu bulk interface. The microhardness of different IMC
phases in the annealed friction-welded Al-Cu bars was measured
previously by Braunovic and Alexandrov (1994). They reported the
hardnesses of AlCu2 , Al2 Cu3 , Al3 Cu4 , AlCu, and Al2 Cu to be 35 HV,
180 HV, 624 HV, 648 HV, and 413 HV, respectively. The microstruc-
ture shown in Fig. 6(a) contained a high proportion of Cu and IMCs
(mainly Al2 Cu as suggested by the EDS study, Table 3) with Al3003
as the matrix. Given that the hardness of Al2 Cu is 413 HV, it is pos-
sible for this region reaching a high hardness above 200 HV. Based
on the above reasoning, the hardness peaks were due to the exist-
ence of high hardness IMC phase. As for the fluctuation of hardness
in the intermixing nugget, it can be reasonably attributed to the
microstructure inhomogeneity. The trough shown in Fig. 8(d) was,
on the other hand, located in the region comprising mainly Al. This
also indicates that there was less Cu stirred into the nugget of LR,
in agreement with the SEM observation in Fig. 6(c). Therefore, the
hardness in the intermixing nugget was strongly affected by the
intermixing of materials and IMC formation.
4.2. Tensile strength
The tensile curves of the four regions are shown in Fig. 9(a). LR
shows very different tensile properties compared with those of FR,
MR and OR. It is obvious that LR had the highest tensile strength
of 1191 N (the rest three: 737 N for FR, 849 N for MR and 753 N for
OR). Moreover, strain at fracture of LR was also the largest, which
reached 3%. In comparison, barely any plastic deformation stage
can be found in the curves of FR, MR and OR and their strains at
fracture were less than 0.3% from the inset of Fig. 9(a). Therefore,
the region experienced the highest welding temperature, i.e. LR,
possessed the best mechanical properties.
Fig. 9(b) shows fracture locations of the four regions. Similarly,
the fracture location of LR was very different from the others,
locating inside the nugget to the Al side with an obvious necking
occurred before fracture. FR, MR and OR fractured in the Al/Cu inter-
mixing zone of the nugget near the Al bulk/Cu bulk interface and
the fracture paths mainly propagated along or perpendicular to the
band structures in nugget. Xue et al. (2011) investigated that the
stacking layered structures formed in Al/Cu FSW joint was the easy
path for the crack propagation during bending test. Bisadi et al.
(2013) also concluded that the brittle IMC was the main reason for
the fracture in tensile shear test. As shown above, abundant IMCs
were found in the intermixing zone of the nuggets of FR, MR and
OR, and of banded morphologies (Figs. 5 and 6). Therefore, rela-
tively low tensile strength as well as poor ductility for these regions
can be ascribed to the easy crack initiation and propagation in this
type of microstructure. Unlike FR, MR and OR, the microstructure
of the intermixing zone in the nugget of LR was very similar to that
of Al3003 base metal as mentioned previously. Hence, the resis-
tance to fracture of the intermixing zone in LR should be better
than the other three regions. Fracture of the LR specimen therefore
occurred inside the nugget to the Al side where the stressed area
was the minimum, as shown in Figs. 5 and 9(b), resulting in the
highest tensile strength and best ductility.
 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57 55

Fig. 9. (a) Tensile curves of 4 regions; (b) traverse cross sections of fractured joints after tensile test showing two fracture modes. (For interpretation of the references to
color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Since the weak zone in the weld was identified to locate in
the nugget close to Al bulk/Cu bulk interface, in order to com-
pare the strengths of the weak zones in each region with the effect
of thickness excluded, a rough treatment was made to estimate
the peak strength of each region based on the peak tensile forces
and the cross-sectional area of this zone of each tensile specimen.
Thicknesses of this zone in four regions were measured (measure-
ment locations are marked by red solid lines in Fig. 9) and given in
Table 4. The peak strengths were then approximated to be 160 MPa,
166 MPa, and 213 MPa for weak zones of FR, MR and OR, respec-
tively (refer to Table 4). For LR, since the fractured location was not
in the weak zone, the peak strength of this zone in LR should be
larger than the calculated value, i.e. 176 MPa, which was ∼89% of
the base Al3003. It is also very interesting to find that the strength
of the weak zone in OR (213 MPa) was even higher than the 3003Al
base metal (197 MPa). In addition, the strength of the Al bulk/Cu
bulk interface should be higher than all above strength values since
none of these regions fractured along Al bulk/Cu bulk interface.
56 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57
Table 4
Calculation for the strength of the weak zone.
Region Tensile force Thickness Area
Unit N mm mm2
FR 737 0.73 4.60
MR 849 0.81 5.10
LR 1191 1.09 6.87
OR 753 0.56 3.53
Even though the reason for the high strength of intermixing zone
and Al bulk/Cu bulk interface remains for further detailed study,
this observation is particularly interesting since it suggests effec-
tive Al/Cu joint with high strength and/or high ductility could be
produced via FSW.
5. Discussion
From the above results, successful welding between small-
dimension Al and Cu pipes was achieved using the welding method
developed in this study. A feature found for this method very
different from the conventional FSW of flat plates is that the sur-
face finish, macro-/micro-structure, and mechanical properties of
the joint change markedly along the circumferential weld seam.
The variation of mechanical properties has been related to the
macro-/micro-structure variation in last section. The main issues
to be discussed here are the formation of the welding temperature
variation and its effect on the macro-/micro-structure. After that,
possible measures for improving the current welding method will
be discussed.
The temperature increase during the circumferential welding
(Fig. 3) was affected by the accumulation of heat which should
be closely related to the fixture fitted inside of the pipes in the
current welding system. In conventional FSW of flat plates, tem-
perature variation in different locations of weld seam was seldom
considered. It is because the welding temperature stabilizes within
a short distance relative to the whole long weld seam. Zhang et al.
(2013) showed a significant effect of the thermal conductivity of
the backing plate on the heat accumulation and hence the welding
temperature during FSW. In the current study, the fixture could
be regarded as a backing plate. The heat was difficult to dissi-
pate through the fixture because of its limited size. Also, the heat
dissipation rate decreased with the increasing of the fixture tem-
perature. Therefore, an obvious heat accumulation resulted and led
to the rising of the peak welding temperature, as shown in Fig. 3.
The welding temperature declining during the final 40◦ rotation
of the circumferential welding, which overlapped the initial weld-
ing seam, can be otherwise attributed to the thickness reduction
produced in 1st pass, as the heat input in FSW would decrease
with the decrease of ID. Therefore, it was the heat accumulation
caused by the fixture and the thickness reduction in the overlapped
welding region that produced this featured welding temperature
history shown in Fig. 3 for the present welding of small-dimension
pipes.
The formation of macro-/micro-structures in the weld nugget, as
shown in Figs. 5 and 6, should be highly influenced by the intermix-
ing and chemical reaction between Al and Cu and the material flow
during welding, all of which can be linked to the welding temper-
ature. For the current study, because the pin was offset completely
to the Al side (O1 = 1.3 mm, PD = 2 mm), the extensive shear of Cu
pieces into the nugget depended on the interaction between the
flowing metals and the Cu at the Al bulk/Cu bulk interface. When
the welding temperature was relatively low in FR, Cu was eas-
ily sheared into pieces due to its poor deformability and brought
into the nugget, which resulted in the formation of large Cu pieces
embedded in the nugget and the inclined Al bulk/Cu bulk interface
(Fig. 5(a)). Low welding temperature may also lead to the defect
formation in FR, similar to the finding in a previous study on the
Strength FSW of Al to Cu which reported that defects easily formed under
MPa low heat input welding condition (Xue et al., 2011). The increase of
160 welding temperature in MR and LR improved the deformability and
166 softening of both metals. Hence, less Cu pieces were sheared into
>173 the nugget and Al bulk/Cu bulk interfaces became more vertical
213
(Fig. 5(b) and (c)). Moreover, the softening of the materials under
higher temperature might also increase the actual ID (the actual ID
was normally slightly smaller than the set value due to the imper-
fect rigidity of the welding system). As a result, thickness reduction
became larger in MR and LR, as shown in Fig. 5.
Based on the different Cu amount in the nuggets among FR, MR
and LR as shown in Fig. 6, it can be obtained that the stirred Cu
in the intermixing zone became less with the increase of welding
temperature, which is also in agreement with the observation in
Fig. 5. The more intermixed Cu lamellae in FR made it easier to
form IMCs in FR than MR and LR, even though the welding tem-
peratures of MR and LR were higher than FR. Therefore, under the
welding parameters in this study, the temperature was already high
enough for forming Al2 Cu. The key factor affecting the formation
of IMCs should be the amount of Cu sheared into the intermixing
zone, which is however still affected by the welding temperature.
Therefore, it was mainly due to the distinctive welding tempera-
ture variation that the macro-/micro-structure of the weld changed
along the circumferential weld seam.As revealed above, the macro-
/micro-structure and the final mechanical properties of the joints
were highly influenced by the welding temperature. Among all four
regions, LR exhibited the highest tensile strength and the best duc-
tility (Fig. 9) with the least IMC formation in the weld (Fig. 6). From
Fig. 3, the welding temperature reached a plateau in LR, relatively
stable at around ∼260 ◦ C. Thus, controlling the welding tempera-
ture is critical for improving the current welding method. Three
possible types of methods are proposed here: (1) heat dissipation
control; (2) auxiliary heat input; (3) welding parameter control. For
the first type, it is actually the material selection for the fixture. A
correct choice of material with proper thermal conductivity may
stabilize the welding temperature within a shorter time and at an
optimum temperature. For the second type, rather than a single
one heat source from the welding tool, an additional auxiliary heat
source can be applied to compensate for the lack of heat to reach
the optimum welding temperature. For the third type, it is known
that the welding temperature during FSW strongly depends on the
combination of the tool rotation speed (ω) and the travel speed
(v), either in the way of ω2 /v (Arbegast and Hartley, 1999) or ω/v
(Hashimoto et al., 1999). De Backer et al. (2014) used a tempera-
ture feedback controller that modifies the FSW tool rotation speed
to maintain a constant welding temperature on a FSW robot and
successfully obtained stable welding temperature. Similarly, PRR
or TRR in the current method could be adjusted in real time by a
temperature feedback controller so that the welding temperature
would be maintained stable at an optimum value. However, in this
case, other welding conditions, e.g. material flow, shearing effect
of the tool, and Al/Cu intermixing, should change as a result of the
variation of PRR or TRR. The macro-/micro-structure and the final
mechanical properties should be also affected. Therefore, it will be
interesting to investigate the effect of the variation of PRR or TRR
at a constant welding temperature on the macro-/micro-structure
and the mechanical properties.
6. Conclusions
Small-dimension Al3003 pipe and pure copper pipe with thin
wall and small diameter were welded via FSW. The main conclu-
sions reached based on the current study are summarized as follow:
 B. Chen et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 223 (2015) 48–57
1. A FSW method for welding small-dimension dissimilar pipes was
developed by using a specially-designed FSW system.
2. Welding temperature kept on increasing during the first ∼220◦
rotation of the circumferential welding and was relatively stabi-
lized for the following ∼140◦ rotation. For the last 40◦ rotation
of circumferential welding, welding temperature decreased due
to the thickness reduction caused by the 1st welding pass. Such
a distinctive welding temperature history contributed signifi-
cantly by the heat accumulation was identified as an important
feature for FSW of small-dimension pipes.
3. Circumferential variations of weld surface condition, macro-
/micro-structure and mechanical properties were also observed
and found to be related to the welding temperature variation.
4. None of the tested tensile specimens fractured along the Al
bulk/Cu bulk interface. Two different fracture modes were
observed: (1) brittle fracture in the nugget close to Al bulk/Cu
bulk interface with the fracture paths mainly propagating along
or perpendicular to the band structures in nugget; and (2) ductile
fracture in the nugget to the Al side with a ductility of ∼3%.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant no. 51204108), the Shanghai Committee
of Science and Technology (Grant no. 11ZR1418100), and the Sci-
entific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese
Scholars, State Education Ministry.
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