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Is Rotary Friction Welding a good method to join cylinders of a metal (such as Ti alloy) and a ceramic (such as SiC).

I know that Diffusion bonding can be used in such cases. However, it has its own disadvantages - particularly its time-consuming nature.

In this context has the use of rotary friction welding (or some other friction welding process) suitable?

It is clearly suitable for shape. But are the materials themselves amenable to this? Since friction welding relies on softening the materials by heating; the dissimilar ductility and thermal properties (SiC is particularly high melting) may pose problem.

I found this which suggests that this is possible but cautions that material selection is important for determining suitablity.

Full Disclosure:

This problem was inspired by a problem on one of my engineering exams. At the time of asking, the exam had already ended a day ago, so asking this question does not (in my understanding) pose any ethical issues.

user0
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  • I think Niels is right. But if you did manage to melt the ceramic, that is of course without friction (stir welding), then somehow quickly brought it to a ready FSW’ed metal like aluminum then maybe they would weld, but after cooling I believe the metal would cause fracture of the ceramic. Edit: that still wouldn’t work because that’s not how the metal would weld to the melted ceramic, if anything it would just be melted ceramic that would just solidify around & near the interface and because the metal is cooler then believe the ceramic would still fracture. Too bad we cant access the flowing – L92MD14 Jul 16 '21 at 17:45

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Probably not. The friction welding process presupposes a certain level of ductility so the mating surfaces can deform together and completely bond. Ceramics lack the deformation mechanisms that metals have and so one would not expect bonding to easily occur. In addition, getting the workpieces hot enough to melt by friction requires tremendous pressures squeezing them together during the process, which would most likely cause the ceramic to fail in compression and shear and shatter to pieces.

niels nielsen
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