Innovative forming makes it easier to create hybrid components

Plastic shapes metal Innovative forming makes it easier to create hybrid components

2024-02-23 Source: IKT | Translated by AI 1 min Reading Time

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The IKT and the IFU (both University of Stuttgart/Germany) are researching in a fundamental project how plastic and metal can be formed into a composite component using a hybrid process.

Faster to the material mix! Specifically, through hybrid forming, as researched by the IKT together with the IFU. By embossing a plastic core with a surrounding metallic preform ring, a gear is created. The geometry of the preform also changes in the process.(Image: IKT) — Faster to the material mix! Specifically, through hybrid forming, as researched by the IKT together with the IFU. By embossing a plastic core with a surrounding metallic preform ring, a gear is created. The geometry of the preform also changes in the process.
(Image: IKT)

When different materials are combined in a component, their positive properties can be meaningfully combined, say the researchers. The resulting components can be successfully used in a wide range of applications – for example, as decorative elements made of plastic with a metallic surface or tribologically optimized gears. As part of a two-year research project funded by the German Research Foundation, the so-called hybrid forming process will be investigated using a sample geometry – specifically, a gear made of plastic and aluminum – as described by the Stuttgart experts. In this process, the plastic serves as a shaping active medium that is pressed into a metal mold, thereby reshaping it.

Things get tricky in terms of phase boundary properties

The process is to be designed in such a way that the bonding strength between the plastic and metal phases is as high as possible, because only then can high forces and torques be transmitted in use. However, the phase boundary between the two materials has so far been scarcely investigated. The complexity of the process is already evident in the gear being studied (see image). The process window and the design freedom of the component are also strongly dependent on the material properties, as further explained. Therefore, temperatures, joining pressures, and the preform geometry are to be estimated and optimized in advance in a simulation-based design. For this reason, a computer-aided model is being developed in parallel with the investigations of the forming process, which describes the behavior of the different materials in the forming process as precisely as possible.

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