A Numerical Analysis of Self-piercing Riveting of Aluminium Alloys Using Aluminium Rivet
摘要
Self-piercing riveting (SPR) is a cold forming process that is used in joining of ductile materials or the materials with low melting points. In this process, the rivet pierces through stacks of sheets and flares into the bottom sheet, making a joint and fixing the stack of sheets together. With the recent increase in demand for Self-piercing Riveting (SPR) in the automotive industry, manufacturers are increasingly using aluminium alloys to produce Body-In-White (BIW) structure of vehicles. This approach helps reduce overall body weight while preserving the strength of the joined metarials, which might otherwise be compromised by conventional hot forming processes. With increase in demand, there is also a problem arising with recycling of the body. Aluminium rivets are used to join aluminium sheets. This also allows to reduce the overall weight of the vehicle to some extent, as there are usually more than thousand self-piercing rivet joints in the vehicle. So, we used sheets of Al 6061-T6 to join using aluminium rivets with the help of self-piercing riveting joining process, using variable types of die and rivets. ABAQUS/CAE Explicit software is used for the numerical analysis of the self-piercing riveting simulation, using 2D axisymmetric method since the self-piercing riveting setup is symmetric along the axis of the rivet, which allows to reduce simulation load and time, while also reducing simulation cost which is usually encountered in industries, thus reducing recycling problems.