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Faculty of Mechanical Engineering , University of Zenica , Zenica , Bosnia and Herzegovina
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering , University of Zenica , Zenica , Bosnia and Herzegovina
In order to meet the increasingly stringent requirements and growing needs of customers across most industrial sectors, particularly in the modern automotive industry, environmental protection, and energy consumption reduction, new materials and methods for their joining that cannot be performed using conventional joining technologies are increasingly being applied. The development of new metal joining technologies is moving towards reducing the use of additional materials and energy. In this regard, modern metal joining processes based on deformation processing principles are being intensively developed. One such material joining process, which presents a serious alternative to spot welding, is the "clinching" method. Clinching is a pressure-based joining technique aimed at joining thin sheets using specially shaped fasteners by plastic deformation of the base materials being joined. The quality of the formed joint is influenced by a number of factors. This paper presents the specifics of the clinching joining process and analyzes the impact of key process factors on the joint quality, with a particular focus on the effective determination of the punch radius required to achieve the minimal force necessary for the joint strength.
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