The Evaluation of Properties of Mechanically Clinched Joints Made of Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Materials

Abstract

Nowadays, there are several reasons for the utilization of the sheets made of the aluminum in the car body production. Besides decreasing the car body weight, there is a need to reduce the fuel consumption of the vehicle as well as the environmental impact by lower production of emissions. Moreover, such reasons are mutually dependent or influence each other. The application of the aluminum sheets in hybrid car body production resulted in the need for innovative joining techniques, which could make possible to successfully join sheets from aluminum alloys. Mechanical clinching is one of the new or innovative joining techniques, which belongs to cold-forming joining process, which makes possible to join different kinds and thicknesses of sheets. Individual materials and thicknesses can be combined. The mechanically clinched joints are durable, and the joining process duration is very fast (duration of 1s) and does not have a distinctive impact on the environment; a protective layer of the sheets remains intact. The paper focuses on the evaluation of the properties of hybrid joints that were prepared by the single stroke clinching process with a rigid die. The hot-dip galvanized steel sheets DC06 and H220PD combined with the sheets from aluminum alloys EN AW 5754 (having different values of the hardness – H11, H22, and H24) and EN AW 6082 were used for joining. The results from experiments confirmed the mechanical clinching is the suitable technique for joining of such combination of sheets. However, some considerations such as the arrangement of the sheets about the punch and die must be regarded.

Keywords

• clinching
• aluminum alloy
• steel sheets
• tensile test