Experimental Study And Numerical Simulation Of Single-Sided Rivet-Bonding Process

Fuel economy has been becoming an important issue of modern vehicles because of the high price of oil and environment protection. Body lightweight is an important way to improve the fuel economy of the vehicle. To lightweight vehicle body, advanced steels as high strength steel and ultra-high strength steel, and lightweight materials as magnesium and aluminum alloys will be widely applied in vehicle body manufacturing. These materials perform poor welding performance, so new joining methods are needed in vehicle body assembly. Adhesive bonding has advantages such as perfect adaptability to materials that to be joined, energy saving and environment protecting, which is suitable for the joining of vehicle body of these new materials. As to the adhesive bonding, it is needed to position and to fix the joined pieces prior to curing of the adhesive. Common riveting is not suitable for this purpose, therefore, it is necessary to study new riveting process suitable for positioning and fixing the joined pieces in adhesive bonding.To join and assemble the pieces into lightweight vehicle body, a new riveting-bonding joining process——single-sided rivet-bonding (SSR-B) was developed in the dissertation. On analysis of principle of SSR-B, the riveting equipment was selected for SSR-B, and rivet was designed. Experiments on single-sided riveting and single-sided rivet-bonding processes were carried out. Relationship between apparent quality and riveting effect of the SSR and SSR-B joint was established via the experiments. Shear and peer tests of the SSR and SSR-B joints were performed to test the mechanical property of the joints. Results of the tests show that the mechanical property of the SSR-B joints is comparable to that of adhesive bonding joints, validating the application foreground of SSR-B. In order to get more detail of SSR, a FE model of SSR was set up, and numerical simulations of SSR of different combination of process parameters was carried out via LS-DYNA code with the model. The simulations are in accordance with the experiments. Effects of riveting speed, shape and dimension of the rivet were analyzed with the simulations.