Mechanical Performance and Microstructural Evolution of Rotary Friction Welding of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene and Polycarbonate Rods

Rotary friction welding (RFW) is a green manufacturing technology with environmental pollution in the field of joining methods. In practice, the welding quality of the friction-welded parts was affected by the peak temperature in the weld joint during the RFW of dissimilar plastic rods. In industry, polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) are two commonly used plastics in consumer products. In this study, the COMSOL multiphysics software was employed to estimate the peak temperature in the weld joint during the RFW of PC and ABS rods. After RFW, the mechanical performance and microstructural evolution of friction-welded parts were investigated experimentally. The average Shore A surface hardness, flexural strength, and impact energy are directly proportional to the rotation speed of the RFW. The quality of RFW is excellent, since the welding strength in the weld joint is better than that of the ABS base materials. The fracture occurs in the ABS rods since their brittleness is higher than that of the PC rods. The average percentage error of predicting the peak temperature using COMSOL software using a mesh element count of 875,688 for five different rotation speeds is about 16.6%. The differential scanning calorimetry curve for the friction-welded parts welded at a rotation speed of 1350 rpm shows an endothermic peak between 400 to 440 °C and an exothermic peak between 600 to 700 °C, showing that the friction-welded parts have better mechanical properties.