Joining of Ferrous and Non-Ferrous materials, such as aluminum and steel alloys is very challenging which requires the efficient and economic processes. The Al/Steel combination have wide range of industrial application especially in automotive sector looking for light weight materials and provides good strength. As we know aluminum and steel alloys have different metallurgical properties it is quite difficult to join them with fusion welding methods. Friction Stir Welding (FSW) process (also referred as green joining technology) is most suitable technology to join dissimilar materials like Al/Steel, which was developed way back in 1991 by The Welding Institute (TWI). Earlier FSW was used to join softer material such as aluminum alloys and the process has been expanded to weld the materials having higher strength. To join high strength materials large forces are required, due to this tool wear have become major issue. To resolve this issue, an additional heating source is introduced in front of the Friction Stir Welding tool which softens the base material to be welded and reduces the load on tool hence no mimized tool wear. Present work focused to join Ferrous and Non-Ferrous materials like A6082-T6 and Steel and evaluate the effect of parameters considered on tensile strength. Taguchi parametric design approach was used to determine process parameters, post welding the results are analyzed by using ANOVA statistical tools. The best welding quality is found out by comparing the result obtained from tensile testing showed that due to preheating of base metal, increase in material flow and quality of the weld.

Keywords : Friction Stir Welding; Ferrous/Non-Ferrous Materials; Preheating; Optimization; SEM.