Friction Stir welding is a modern process that was recently patented. FSW is seeing a rapid development in the recent years in replacing other traditional welding methods in almost all industries. The FSW process is currently being used in hull building, aerospace, railway, andoil & gas industries. Now since Industry 4.0 is moving towards electrification of all industrial sectors, the automotive industry has been focusing on electrification of vehicles and moving from an ICE (Internal combustion Engine) to battery electric vehicles. With the current industry demands, there is not enough research being done on material welding technology within the battery pack material joining and the benefits as well as the economic impact of new welding methods. Some investigations have been started for high speed FSW for welding light weight materials, however the research gap falls short of discussing the benefits and the feasibility of the process application.

In this Publication, the technology of FSW is investigated and analysed through experimentations and simulation in order to see the feasibility on EV applications. To build up an understanding of the requirements and the industrial process parameters, EV industrial cellmaterial is used to run the analysis. Two Aluminium AA3003 H14 thin plates are welded together in a butt joint configuration with minimal fixture, using a FSW tool. The choice of this material is due to the wide availability and use of this material in the EV cell production in current industry. There is very less research done on welding 3xxx grade aluminium due to it being difficult to weld let alone using FSW. The main challenge with an almost pure aluminium alloy is that we get very rapid heat conductivity and plastic deformation underlow heat and force inputs, another challenge is the behaviour of the material microstructure, since AA 3xxx grade alloys are non-heat treatable alloys, formation of tunnel defects and micro cracks could be prominent. Process parameters will be optimised thoroughly to overcome these possible defects. Process optimisation is required in order to achieve the industry standards that matches the application. The welding parameters under investigation are force, welding speed and rotation speed of the tool in revolutions per minute (RPM). Changing these parameters will influence the welding surface and the microstructure. The welding surface of the material will be investigated through surface defects and surface finish through visual inspection, according to the inspection the welding seam the welding parameters will then be changed and tried until an optimal result is achieved. The change in welding parameters will be through fixing one parameter at a time and changing the other two giving us a versus relationship between the other variable parameters then analysed. A Taguchi DOE and a factorial design DOE were set up to run different analysis trials.The Responses achieved from the experiments are in form of Temperature readings and plastic deformation of the material will be reviewed by microstructural analysis, testing and numerical simulation. The temperature is recorded through a thermo couple connected between the FSW tool and the workpiece (TWT), and it uses the thermoelectric effect to measure the stirring zone temperature by the difference in voltage. The experiments could be backed up with numerical simulation of the FSW process using ABAQUS explicit on AA 3003, where all environment factors and fixtures are removed, andan analysis of the plastic deformation-temperature response can be obtained. The simulation could follow the CEL/AEL- Arbitrary Euler Lagrange relationship to study the effect of the temperature response from the Euler surface while monitoring the plastic deformation within the material. The simulation can allow us to design and model freely different tools and plates that can be used in an upcoming EV cell design to study and visualise the effects of FSW and tool path on the design. Full simulation and experimentation of pin hole weldingcan be open for research and discussion at a future stage of this research, proposals foradvanced FSW techniques are also discussed.