Residual stresses in Linear Friction Welding of aluminium alloys

•A fully-coupled implicit thermo-mechanical model for LFW has been developed.•Model employs semi-automatic re-meshing to accommodate large deformation.•Model is validated by the multi-detector polychromatic synchrotron X-ray data.•A general function to describe the Residual Stresses (RS) distribution is provided.•A characteristic length scale is found in the RS distribution function.

In the present study, the residual stresses distribution in the Linear Friction Welded (LFW) pieces were studied using Finite Element (FE) simulation and high energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction. Fully-coupled implicit thermo-mechanical analysis simulation procedure was employed, with semi-automatic re-meshing using Python scripting to accommodate large deformation and output contour tracking methods for extracting deformed configurations. Model validated by the multi-detector polychromatic synchrotron X-ray experimental data were used to study the distribution of residual stresses distribution in the Linear Friction Welded (LFW) pieces to provide a general function to describe the residual stresses distribution. A characteristic length scale was found in the plot.