Finite strain anisotropic elasto-plastic model for the simulation of the forming and testing of metal/short fiber reinforced polymer clinch joints at room temperature

There is a strong trend in the automotive industry to reduce car body-, chassis- and power-train mass in order to lower carbon emissions. More wide spread use of lightweight short fiber reinforced polymer (SFRP) is a promising approach to attain this goal. This poses the challenge of how to integrate new SFRP components by joining them to traditional sheet metal structures. Recently (1), the clinching technique has been successfully applied as a suitable joining method for dissimilar material such as SFRP and Aluminum. The material pairing PA6GF30 and EN AW 5754 is chosen for this purpose due to their common application in industry. The current contribution presents a verification and validation of a finite strain anisotropic material model for SFRP developed in (2) for the FE simulation of the hybrid clinching process. The finite fiber rotation during forming and separation, and thus the change of the preferential material direction, is represented in this model. Plastic deformations in SFRP are consider...