High-Resolution Residual Stress Mapping of Magnesium AZ80 Friction Stir Welds for Three Processing Conditions

Low-angle synchrotron transmission diffraction has been used to create high-resolution 2D residual strain maps of friction stir welds made with three processing conditions. These spatial maps of residual strain reveal local concentrations not detectable by line scans, and confirm that the asymmetric material flow known to produce asymmetric temperature and texture distributions also results in asymmetric residual strain distributions. The experimental set-up permitted simultaneous measurement of both texture and strain, which provides strong evidence against the correlation of these features in magnesium friction stir welds. Mapping diffraction peak width across the weld provides insight into the spatial distribution of dislocations and microstrains, and indicates locations of interest for higher resolution research such as TEM. A diffraction method is presented to determine the solute content of a ternary system using the lower symmetry of a non-cubic system, which can be extended to detecting the onset of precipitation among other applications. Comparison of three friction stir-welding conditions shows how the residual strains at the interface can reverse from compressive to tensile with decrease in the heat input, explaining a significant disparity in the literature results. Lower residual stress values were found to be well-correlated with improved transverse tensile behavior.