Recent developments in friction stir welding and resulting industrial practices

Friction stir welding (FSW) finds wide application in a number of industries thanks to its efficiency and sustainability. Salient industrial sectors utilising this process are automobile, aerospace, shipbuilding and railways. This article describes the recent advances in FSW. A brief background has also been provided. Most of the advancements attempted to tackle the problem of non-uniform temperature distribution in weld zone, pinhole left after welding and weld efficiency in FSW. In the last two decades, several variants of FSW have become popular. Some researchers augmented auxiliary energy sources with conventional FSW to obtain higher welding speeds and tool life with reduced cost. FSW offers an edge over other welding processes in terms of its ability to join dissimilar materials, e.g. aluminium and steel. Modelling of FSW process needs more attention. At present the available models make several debateable assumptions. Finally, attempts have been made to foresee the future of FSW and to provide some directions for future developments.