Virtuelle Beurteilung der Fügemöglichkeit von mechanischen Verbindungsprozessen in der Prozessentwicklung am Beispiel des Radialnietens

In order to save time and investment costs, it is crucial in process develop-ment to gain precise knowledge of the suitability of a connection process at the earliest possible project stage. The method of virtual testing developed here enables a semi-automated process for identification and subsequent evaluation of the process. Furthermore, similar interconnection solutions can be compared for a given case. A prerequisite for the reliability of such a
method is the analytical determination of its input parameters. For the me-chanical forming and joining process, radial riveting, a process simulation using Abaqus/CAE (V6. 14) was created in this paper. The joining process was developed on the basis of a real component and evaluated by means of real tests on corresponding laboratory machines. In a further step, a number of sensitivity calculations were carried out in the area of process, geometry and tool parameters. The workflow of the sensitivity analysis was auto-mated. The parametric model development enables a self-generating model generation for the execution of various simulation calculations. The evalua-tion of these results was carried out with the help of the OptiSLang program. The large number of parameters could be limited to a reduced number of significant parameters. The understanding of the cause-effect relationships makes it possible to refer to design notes and improves the understanding of processes.