Modeling of Self-Piercing Riveted Joints for Crash Simulation – State of the Art and Future Topics

The requirements for energy efficiency and lightweight construction in automotive engineering rise steadily. Therefore a maximum flexibility of different materials is necessary and new joining techniques are constantly developed. The resulting large number of joints with different properties leads to the need to provide for each type of joint an appropriate modeling method for crash simulation. In recent years the *CONSTRAINED_INTERPOLATION_SPOTWELD was modified to improve the modeling of the behavior of self-piercing riveted joints. The modified version will be available in LS- Dyna soon. This paper gives a short overview about the background and shows the benefits and limitations of the model. Furthermore, future research topics are shown for increasing the model quality. Topics like the influence of deformations in the surrounding sheets and the local loading situation on the rivet behavior will be discussed. For this purpose simulation results of variations of the lap shear specimen are shown and compared with experimental data. First results of a German research project called “Characterization and modeling of mechanical joints with one-sided accessibility for profile intensive lightweight construction under crash loading” will be presented. The Industrial Collective Research project (IGF-Nr. 18289 N / FOSTA P1032) of the Research Association for Steel Application (FOSTA), Sohnstrasse 65, 40237 Duesseldorf has been funded by the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations „Otto von Guericke“ e.V. (AiF) within the program for sponsorship of Industrial Collective Research (IGF) of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) based on an enactment of the German Bundestag.