Abstract
Owing to high oil prices and environmental issues, the automobile industry has conducted considerable research and made large investments to manufacture a high-efficiency automobiles. In the case of automobile wheels in which a lightweight material is used to increase the fuel efficiency a mold is used to increase the production efficiency; however, the use of the molding method for this purpose is very expensive. Therefore an automobile wheel consists of two parts. In this study a two-piece automobile wheel is manufactured by the friction stir welding(FSW) of Al6061-T6 to reduce the manufacturing cost and process complexity. The FSW welding tool geometry and rotational speed, and the feed rate are key factors that significantly affect the weld strength. Therefore tensile tests were conducted on specimens produced using various welding conditions, and the optimal FSW welding conditions were applied to manufacture aluminum wheels. To ensure reliability, prototype aluminum wheels were manufactured and their mechanical reliability and safety were evaluated using a durability test, fatigue durability test, and impact test. Through this study, aluminum wheel production was made possible using the FSW method.
