Experimental study of formability of friction stir welded ultra-thin sheets of IF steel

In this paper, the experimental investigation of formability of friction stir welded ultra-thin sheets of IF steel is investigated experimentally. First, the sheets are joined by friction stir welding process based on the tests determined according to the Taguchi design of experiments. The investigated parameters in the welding process are as tool rotational and traverse speeds. Then, the tailor welded blanks are formed based on dome height test up to the defect stage and the dome height is measured for each test. Therefore, the effects of friction stir welding process parameters on formability of friction stir welded ultra-thin sheets of IF steel are evaluated. The results show that by increasing the rotational speed, the dome height in forming process decreases, while with increasing the traverse speed, the formability of tailor welded blanks by friction stir welding process improves.  Also, the results of optimization based on signal to noise ratio method show that the tool rotational speed has the greatest effect on the dome height of tailor welded blank.