Thermoactivated pinning - An innovative technology for the joining of fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites

摘要

Because of their good mechanical properties and efficient fabrication processes, increasing significance is being attached to fibre composite materials with thermoplastic matrices particularly for applications in large-scale series production. Moreover, the targeted exploitation of their specific material properties is result- ing in a large number of new processing possibilities. Thus, the repeated meltabil-ity of the thermoplastic matrix can be used for the assembly of components, for example, by inserting metallic pins into overlapping joining zones as joining elements by means of hot embedding. In the present article, this innovative joining technology is introduced and the resulting local material structure is discussed. The load-bearing behaviour of the pinned joints is analysed on single- and double-lap shear test specimens using in-situ computer tomography.