In recent years, there has been a growing interest in composite components, which may be designed to provide enhanced mechanical and physical effective properties. One of the methods available to produce such components is joining by plastic deformation, which results in metallurgical bonding at the interface. However, the portions of the interface that are bonded and the inhomogeneity in the bonding strength achieved at the interface tend to be overlooked. In the present study, Al6061 beams were bonded, by hot compression (300-500 °C) to different degrees of reduction. The compression was followed by tensile debonding experiments and the revealed interface was microscopically characterized in order to determine the areas that were metallurgically bonded. The SEM characterization revealed that the actual bonded area is much smaller than the interface contact area. Thermo-mechanical finite element models of the compression stage were used to investigate the thermo-mechanical fields, which develop along the interface and influence the resulting bonding strength. The principal strain field patterns across the interface area were shown to be similar to the experimentally observed temperature-dependent bonding patterns. In addition, a quantitative criterion for bonding quality was implemented and shown to correlate with the experimental findings.
Keywords: Al6061; FE; bonding strength; compression; forming.