Friction stir welding (FSW) is a favorable welding technology for aluminum alloys. The FSW process involves complex heat and\nmass transfer. Explicit meshless particle methods are currently popular methods for simulating the process, but they require\nexpensive computational cost. Coupling explicit finite element method (FEM) and meshless particle methods can ease the\nproblem by making use of high efficiency of FEM and advantages of meshless particle methods. Though many efforts have been\nmade to couple FEM and meshless particle methods for transient dynamics problems, coupling them for transient heat transfer\nproblems is seldom addressed. In this work, we focus on treating this problem. We developed an explicit coupled method of FEM\nand the meshless particle method presented in a previous work and used it to simulate the thermal process during FSW. In the\nmethod, FEM using lumped heat capacity matrix and low-order numerical integration is constructed to obtain high efficiency. A\nnew coupling algorithm is proposed to link thermal calculations of the weak-form FEM and the strong-form meshless particle\nmethod. Forward Euler method is used for time integration to achieve an explicit algorithm. The coupled method is used to\ncalculate a numerical example having analytical solution. Calculated results show that it can achieve a good accuracy. The method\nis employed to simulate FSW of Al 6061-T6 plates. It predicts thermal cycles in good agreement with experimental results. It shows\nan accuracy comparable to that of the meshless particle method while having a higher efficiency than the latter.
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