Webinars
29 January 2025
Joint Industry Project Launch Meeting on Friction Stir Welding
JIPs are programmes of work that are of mutual interest to a number of organisations. Interested parties are invited to sponsor the projects, allowing you to share the cost and yet still gain the benefits of the project outcomes. Sponsors are provided with progress updates and are able to guide the direction of the research to better suit your needs.
Each of the four projects relate to friction stir welding (FSW), promising their own specific scope and set of benefits for industry, including enhanced production speeds, reduced defects, and automation that helps alleviate skills shortages.
The four proposed projects are:
- FSW of Steel: Increasing the Thickness Capability
Considerable interest has been shown in increasing the thickness capability, allowing welds to be made in steel up to 25mm thick. Potential application areas include, shipbuilding, pressure vessels, pipelines, nuclear waste canisters, process plant and port infrastructure.
- Dissimilar Metal (DMW) and Corrosion Resistant Alloy (CRA) Welds
A study to demonstrate the feasibility of making dissimilar welds between several grades of steel and CRAs, characterising the properties of the welds made. This has the potential to reduce costs, avoid potentially harmful microstructures, and provide guidance on the parameters required for friction stir welding of CRAs.
- Fatigue Life Enhancement and Weld Repair in Steel by FSW
Research has shown that the fine grained, wrought microstructures generated by friction stir welding in steel can have excellent fatigue performance, typically matching or exceeding that of the parent metal. This shows that there is considerable potential to use friction stir processing to repair and / or enhance the fatigue properties of existing arc welded fabrications, reducing fatigue repair costs and enhance the service life of assets.
- Hybrid Submerged Arc Welding (SAW)/FSW for Steel
Combining SAW and FSW would allow these processes to compensate for one-another’s individual disadvantages and create a solution that delivers the benefits of FSW along with the speed, thickness capability, and gap-filling properties of SAW.
During the launch event an overview of the four JIP topics will be presented with the aim to receive feedback from the industry as to which topics are of most interest to progress to the next stages
You can see more about the proposed projects by downloading the PDF document below, which offers further details.
If you would like to find out more or express an interest in any of these proposed projects, you can email Sofia Sampethai at sofia.sampethai@twi.co.uk
Find out more about the TWI Joint Industry Project Programme
Speakers
Stephen Cater FRIN MEI ARINA AWeldI
Principal Project Leader – Friction Welding and Processing
TWI
Stephen Cater is a Principal Project Leader at TWI’s Yorkshire Technology Centre, responsible for research into the friction stir welding (FSW) of both thick section light metal alloys such as aluminium and magnesium, and high plasticisation point materials such as steel, titanium and nickel based alloys.
A metallurgist by training, and winner of the Richard Weck Award for his work on steel, Stephen led TWI’s Core Research Programme (CRP) into the development of FSW for steel, and also led the welding elements of projects looking at FSW for marine construction. These programmes were HILDA (High Integrity Low Distortion Assembly), MOSAIC (Materials Onboard: Steel Advancements and Integrated Composites) and RESURGAM ( Robotic Survey, Repair & Agile Manufacture). Stephen also developed the capability to friction stir weld steel under oil in the FSWBOT programme which is currently developing a robotic system able to conduct patch repairs of defects inside live oil pipelines.
Stephen has led a number of single client projects on the welding of thick section (>25mm) aluminium for safety critical applications and is currently leading two major projects in this area. One is a CRP project investigating new tool designs and FSW techniques for thick section aluminium and the second is a Joint Industry Project (JIP) for a group of sponsors interested in the early commercialisation of these new FSW techniques. Stephen also led a SCP for a customer in the Power sector who had a requirement for high integrity aluminium FSW in cryogenic service. Stephen also leads TWI’s FSW training programme, having developed a series of FSW courses in accordance with the requirements of the ISO FSW Standard, ISO 25239:2011.