The NAFEMS Eastern European 2020 Virtual Conference took place on the 23rd and 24th of September 2020. The event gave participants access to high level presentations in the field of structural mechanics, computational fluid dynamics, electromagnetics and discrete element methods.

Resource Abstract
The aim of this presentation is to give a brief overview of the technology of clinching through two types of materials. Process simulations are very important during the development phase. The price of these simulation is much more less, than the trial-and-error methodology and because of the FE technology several affecting parameter can easily investigate with minimal effort. Basically the clinch joints are a
very fast and cost effective joining technique of thin sheet metals through local plastic deformation. The presented FE model is a 2D axisymmetric model which consider the most important parameters of the process. The applied FE code for the problem is the well-known nonlinear solver, MSC.Marc&Menat 2019. During the simulation several factors are considered, and some of them are also investigated and presented in this presentation. For instance, the geometry of the punching tool or the setup of the 2D model is analyzed. In the presentation the verification of the clinch joints for DP600 type of advanced high strength steel and AA6082 aluminum alloy is presented. The different heat treated cases of the aluminum alloy has been investigated and compared to experimental results. The presentation also deals with the model simplification techniques, especially the equivalent modelling strategy for tensile loads, which is an important question in the industrial practice. One of the biggest advantage of clinching technology is the capability to join together dissimilar materials. A novel equation is presented which is verified with the applied materials to estimate the dissimilar material joint’s tensile strength without several expensive tests. The homogenous equation has been developed earlier by others, but there is not known for inhomogeneous cases. The reduced/equivalent UTS is introduced which is considering the order of the sheets with a weight factor.