THE ABILITY TO CLINCHING AS A FUNCTION OF MATERIAL HARDENING BEHAVIOR

Mechanical clinching can be used to joining different metallic materials. The only restriction is their plastic properties. However, some plastic materials, with good ductility, do not conform strong clinch joint, e.g. materials, featured by high strain hardening phenomena are difficult to clinching and do not create durable clinch joint. In case of others materials with limited ductility clinch forming generates the process-induced defects such as cracks. So, there are material’s features which are very important for the clinch forming process and among them the strain hardening properties seem to be in special importance. The clinch joints of different materials with diversified plastic and strength properties were tested. A single overlap clinch joints with one clinch bulge were realized in the tests. The joints were tested in the pull test. The obtained results showed the relation of the clinch joinability to the materials’ strain hardening exponent. The good quality and good strength joints, were obtained for materials with low value of strain hardening exponent below n = 0,22.