Joining Strength of Self-Piercing Riveted Vibration-Damping Steel and Dissimilar Materials

A vibration-damping steel panel is used for lightweight vehicles to block any noise subjected to the passenger cabin replacing heavy fiber-based insulators. Conventional weld joining methods often encounter problems due to the presence of viscoelastic compounds reducing the joint quality and making the joining process unproductive. In this work, we present experimental results that show the self-piercing riveting (SPR) process can be used to produce high-quality joints between vibration-damping steel and (i) commonly used steel alloy (SPFC590DP), (ii) carbon-fiber-reinforced-plastic (CFRP) panels. Various die shapes are used to investigate the resulting interlock width and bottom thickness of the joints and tensile shear load tests were performed to evaluate the joining strength. The results show that high-quality joints between vibration-damping steel and the steel alloy are possible for all the dye types and panel configurations, used in this study, producing up to 6.2 kN of tensile shear load. High-quality joints were also possible with CFRP producing up to 4.0 kN, however, acceptable joints were formed only when the CFRP panels were on top during the riveting process due to severe cracking.