Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Manufacturing-Induced Pre-Strain on the Load-Bearing Capacity of Clinched Joints

Background. Clinching is a conventional cold forming process in which two or more sheets can be joined without auxiliary parts. A pre-forming of the parts to be joined, which is introduced by previous manufacturing steps, has an influence on the joining result. When considering the suitability for joining with regard to the formability of the materials, the influence of the preforming steps must be taken into account. The influences of strain hardening and sheet thickness on the joining properties must be investigated. In this context, a Finite Element Method (FEM) based metamodel analysis of the clinching process was carried out in [1] to investigate the robustness of the clinching process with respect to the different material pre-strains. In [2], the method was extended to the load bearing simulation.Procedure. The metamodel from preliminary work based on various FE models, which predicts the load-bearing capacity of a clinched joint influenced by pre-straining, is compared here with experimental data and the accuracy of the metamodel prediction is discussed. For this purpose an experimental procedure was further develop which allows the preforming of metal sheets from which joining specimens can be separated with a certain degree of unidirectional deformation. In the study, the procedure for preparing the joint specimens and the results of the loading tests are presented. Different possible relevant pre-strain combinations are investigated and compared with the simulation results, to validate the FE models and choose suitable metamodel.</jats:p>