Speaker
Description
The joints between different lightweight materials play a significant role in multi-material design of structural components for automotive industry, aiming to reduce the vehicle’s weight without compromising performance or safety. Yet, conventional mechanical joining technologies between metals and Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) either create the need of drilling a hole in the composite material, leading to damages which reduce the load bearing capacity, or increase the weight of the part due the incorporation of fasteners. At the same time, alternative mechanical joining methodologies involve complex and costly processing, hindering their industrial application.
In this work, a new mechanical joining strategy between aluminum and CFRP was developed and characterized. Such technology combines loads and deformations involved in both materials during cold forming processes to generate strong joints. The procedure can be easily integrated in traditional sheet metal forming steps, which makes it simple, cost-efficient, and easy to implement in large production series. At the same time, it avoids the incorporation of fasteners, the drilling or damaging of the composite material and complex processing.
The process is currently under a patent evaluation. The patent will be sent along December. Therefore, we cannot disclose more detailed information and this text contains the information we can submit at the moment. We know the information provided in the abstract is vague, but we will prepare a sound paper when we get the green light from our legal department. We will be glad to show our results for the first time in the IDDRG conference.