Investigation of the Mechanical Properties of Friction Drilling with 6082-T6 Aluminium Alloy

Friction drilling is a non-conventional hole-making process suitable for thin-section, ductile metals. During friction drilling, heat is generated due to tool rotation and the resulting flow of metal creates a bushing on the exit side of the hole. The bushing offers a longer engagement length for any subsequent thread making process. The threaded holes in this study were created by friction drilling and thread forming in 6082-T6 aluminium alloy. Four scenarios of the threaded holes were created with four levels of rotation rates of friction drilling processes (2000 rpm to 4000 rpm) and the mechanical properties of the threaded holes were compared. It was shown that 3000–3500 rpm is the optimum range of the rotation rate that achieved the higher load-bearing capacities (i.e., resistance to thread stripping) of 5.0–5.5 kN. In addition, the regions close to the thread surfaces in all scenarios were found to have experienced localised hardening to a hardness from 113 HV to around 125 HV.