Friction welding is a solid state joining process with many industrial applications. The welding parameters like upset pressure, frictional pressure and rotational speed play a vital role in determining the responses of the process. The objective of present work is to join aluminium based composite rods using friction welding for various combinations of the input parameters designed by using a L8 orthogonal array. Tensile strength and hardness of the joints formed were observed as the responses for the different trials. Desirability analysis was employed for obtaining the optimal setting of input parameters and ANOVA was performed to predict the contribution of various parameters in affecting the desired responses.