Influence of rivet length on joint formation on self-piercing riveting process considering further process parameters

Driven by the CO2-emission law by the European government and the increasing costs for raw materials as well as energy, the automotive industry is increasingly using multi-material constructions. This leads to a continuous increase in the use of mechanical joining techniques and especially the self-piercing riveting is of particular importance. The reason for this is the wide range of joining possibilities as well as the high load-bearing capacities of the joints. To be able to react to changing boundary conditions, like material thickness or strength variation of the sheets, research work is crucial with regard to the increase of versatility. In this paper, a numerical study of the influences on the selfpiercing riveting process is presented. For this purpose, the influence of different process parameters such as rivet length and die depth on various quality-relevant characteristics were investigated. With the help of the design of experiment, significant influences were determined and interactions between the individual parameters are shown.