Consideration of the manufacturing history of sheet metal components for the adaptation of a clinching process

The process chain for the manufacturing of sheet metal components in mass production includes various cutting and forming operations, which influence the resulting properties of the parts and therefore subsequent manufacturing steps, such as clamping and joining. It is shown that clamping of the components leads to superimposed residual stresses and geometry changes. Therefore, the part properties differ from the initial state of the semifinished products, which has to be considered in the design of clinched joints. This paper presents an approach for coupled determination of the properties of semifinished and finished parts during deep drawing and clamping as well as their effects on the joint quality during clinching. One method for the effective and efficient determination of the properties of semifinished products and components during production is using process data from the preceding manufacturing processes, which is concretely presented in this work. In addition to the interconnection of the entire production chain, it is necessary to define relevant process data for each individual manufacturing step and to correlate the data with the material properties reliably. Therefore, the cross-process interactions of different steps of the process chain for the manufacturing of sheet metal components and the effect of process variations on subsequent manufacturing steps are investigated. Consequently, the boundary conditions for a mechanical joining process based on data from preceding process steps can be predicted.