Organic sheets made out of fiber-reinforced thermoplastics are able to make a crucial contribution to increase the lightweight potential of a design. They show high specific strength- and stiffness properties, good da...Organic sheets made out of fiber-reinforced thermoplastics are able to make a crucial contribution to increase the lightweight potential of a design. They show high specific strength- and stiffness properties, good damping characteristics and recycling capabilities, while being able to show a higher energy absorption capacity than comparable metal constructions. Nowadays, multi-material designs are an established way in the automotive industry to combine the benefits of metal and fiber-reinforced plastics. Currently used technologies for the joining of organic sheets and metals in large-scale production are mechanical joining technologies and adhesive technologies. Both techniques require large overlapping areas that are not required in the design of the part. Additionally, mechanical joining is usually combined with “fiber-destroying” pre-drilling and punching processes. This will disturb the force flux at the joining location by causing unwanted fiber- and inter-fiber failure and inducing critical notch stresses. Therefore, the multi-material design with fiber-reinforced thermoplastics and metals needs optimized joining techniques that don’t interrupt the force flux, so that higher loads can be induced and the full benefit of the FRP material can be used. This article focuses on the characterization of a new joining technology, based on the Cold Metal Transfer (CMT) welding process that allows joining of organic sheets and metals in a load path optimized way, with short cycle times. This is achieved by redirecting the fibers around the joining area by the insertion of a thin metal pin. The path of the fibers will be similar to paths of fibers inside structures found in nature, e.g. a knothole inside of a tree. As a result of the bionic fiber design of the joint, high joining strengths can be achieved. The increase of the joint strength compared to blind riveting was performed and proven with stainless steel and orthotropic reinforced composites in shear-tests based on the DIN EN ISO 14273. Every specimen 展开更多
Reliable line production processes and simulation tools play a central role for the structural integration of thermoplastic composites in advanced lightweight constructions. Provided that material-adapted joining tech...Reliable line production processes and simulation tools play a central role for the structural integration of thermoplastic composites in advanced lightweight constructions. Provided that material-adapted joining technologies are available, they can be applied in heavy-duty multi-material designs (MMD). A load-adapted approach was implemented into the new fully automatic and fault-tolerant thermo mechanical flow drill joining (FDJ) concept. With this method it is possible to manufacture reproducible high strength FRP/metal-joints within short cycle times and without use of extra joining elements for the first time. The analysis of FDJ joints requires a simplified model of the joint to enable efficient numerical simulations. The present work introduces a strategy in modeling a finite-element based analogous-approach for FDJ-joints with glass fiber reinforced polypropylene and high-strength steel. Combined with a newly developed section-force related failure criterion, it is possible to predict the fundamental failure behavior in multi-axial stress states. The functionality of the holistic approach is illustrated by a demonstrator that represents a part of a car body-in-white structure. The comparison of simulated and experimentally determined failure loads proves the applicability for several combined load cases.展开更多
文摘Organic sheets made out of fiber-reinforced thermoplastics are able to make a crucial contribution to increase the lightweight potential of a design. They show high specific strength- and stiffness properties, good damping characteristics and recycling capabilities, while being able to show a higher energy absorption capacity than comparable metal constructions. Nowadays, multi-material designs are an established way in the automotive industry to combine the benefits of metal and fiber-reinforced plastics. Currently used technologies for the joining of organic sheets and metals in large-scale production are mechanical joining technologies and adhesive technologies. Both techniques require large overlapping areas that are not required in the design of the part. Additionally, mechanical joining is usually combined with “fiber-destroying” pre-drilling and punching processes. This will disturb the force flux at the joining location by causing unwanted fiber- and inter-fiber failure and inducing critical notch stresses. Therefore, the multi-material design with fiber-reinforced thermoplastics and metals needs optimized joining techniques that don’t interrupt the force flux, so that higher loads can be induced and the full benefit of the FRP material can be used. This article focuses on the characterization of a new joining technology, based on the Cold Metal Transfer (CMT) welding process that allows joining of organic sheets and metals in a load path optimized way, with short cycle times. This is achieved by redirecting the fibers around the joining area by the insertion of a thin metal pin. The path of the fibers will be similar to paths of fibers inside structures found in nature, e.g. a knothole inside of a tree. As a result of the bionic fiber design of the joint, high joining strengths can be achieved. The increase of the joint strength compared to blind riveting was performed and proven with stainless steel and orthotropic reinforced composites in shear-tests based on the DIN EN ISO 14273. Every specimen
文摘Reliable line production processes and simulation tools play a central role for the structural integration of thermoplastic composites in advanced lightweight constructions. Provided that material-adapted joining technologies are available, they can be applied in heavy-duty multi-material designs (MMD). A load-adapted approach was implemented into the new fully automatic and fault-tolerant thermo mechanical flow drill joining (FDJ) concept. With this method it is possible to manufacture reproducible high strength FRP/metal-joints within short cycle times and without use of extra joining elements for the first time. The analysis of FDJ joints requires a simplified model of the joint to enable efficient numerical simulations. The present work introduces a strategy in modeling a finite-element based analogous-approach for FDJ-joints with glass fiber reinforced polypropylene and high-strength steel. Combined with a newly developed section-force related failure criterion, it is possible to predict the fundamental failure behavior in multi-axial stress states. The functionality of the holistic approach is illustrated by a demonstrator that represents a part of a car body-in-white structure. The comparison of simulated and experimentally determined failure loads proves the applicability for several combined load cases.
