Development of Friction Welding Procedure for Weld Joints of Metal Reinforced Polymer Composites

Abstract

Poly(ether ether ketone), also known as PEEK is an organic polymer newlinecharacterized by a semicrystalline structure. Due to its elevated melting point of newline343 and#61616;C, exceptional mechanical strength, and remarkable chemical resistance, this newlinematerial has been widely employed as a high-performance engineering plastic. Due newlineto this, PEEK and its composites have exhibited significant prospective applications newlinein the aerospace and medical industries. However, its practicality is restricted because newlineto the inadequate strength inside the mechanically connected components. Joining of newlinecomposite material is great challenge to the researchers till now. Considering this, the newlinepresent research has been conducted on an alternative method of joint process, leading newlineto the development of an innovative technology for joining materials based on PEEK. newlineThe main objectives of this study are: first, joining of polymer to polymer; second, newlinejoining of similar composites with similar composition; third, joining of dissimilar newlinecomposites with similar composition; and fourth, joining of similar composites with newlinedissimilar compositions. In this experiment, a Friction Welding Process (FWP) solidstate newlinejoining technique was employed to connect two commercially available PEEK newlinerods. Friction welding was selected in this entire project due to its ability to connect newlineunconventional material components with both high strength and low distortion. newlineDesign of experiment was employed via statistical optimization technique to newlinedetermine the friction welding process factors, which mainly include forge load, newlinefriction load, and friction welding duration and their optimized values were found to newlinebe 100 N, 450 N, and 8 s, respectively. Nevertheless, there is ample opportunity to newlineexplore the solid state joining of high performance polymer like, PEEK based newlinecomposites. Therefore, a great effort has been taken to join polymer composites using newlinefriction welding based solid state joining in the present study newline