Abstract
Fully reversed axial fatigue tests have been performed in order to investigate fatigue behaviour in friction stir welded (FSW) joints of 1050 and 5083 aluminium alloys. In 5083 FSW joints, fatigue failure occurred in the parent metal away from the weld centre, leading to similar fatigue strength to the parent metal. In 1050 FSW joints, however, fatigue crack initiated near the boundary between thermo-mechanically affected zone and heat affected zone, which resulted in lower fatigue strength of the joint than the parent metal. This was attributed to the local plastic deformation due to the discontinuity of hardness at the boundary.
