Investigation on lightweight performance of tubular rivet-reinforced joints for joining AA5052 sheets

Lightweight performance and the strength of clinched joints became the key to the development of rivet-reinforced joints. In the present study, the clinching joints of AA5052 aluminum alloy were reinforced by a solid rivet and tubular rivets with wall thicknesses of 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm, to evaluate the effect of the wall thickness on the performance of the rivet-reinforced joints. The rivet-reinforcing method using tubular rivets proved to be pronounced for increasing the energy absorption and improving the strength of the clinched joint. In the experiment, compared with the conventional mechanical clinched joint, the average shearing strength of the rivet-reinforced joint with the tubular rivet of 1.5 mm wall thickness was increased from 1608.13 to 3514.5 N, and the energy absorption of the rivet-reinforced joint with the tubular rivet of 1 mm wall thickness was increased from 0.699 to 3.894 J. In terms of lightweight evaluation performance, the rivet-reinforced joint with a 1 mm wall thickness tubular rivet offered excellent results in automobile light weighting compared with the other types of rivet-reinforced joints, and the lightweight evaluation values were R 1.0 = 10.494 kN/g and W 1.0 = 2.159 J/g .