Joining of plastic‐metal hybrid components by overmoulding of specially designed form‐closure elements

Ecological and economic aspects nowadays increasingly require the development of weight‐reduced designs and energy‐efficient production processes. Particularly in the field of modern vehicle or aircraft construction, developers endeavour to take into account the ever more extensive customer requirements for safety and comfort by using lightweight construction. In many lightweight construction applications, alongside the classic material steel, plastics and the light metals aluminium, magnesium and titanium are being used. Due to a wide variety of requirements, the combination of different material classes to form hybrids will become even more important in the future. Injection moulding is an established method to join plastic‐metal hybrid components. In the present study, the potentials of electron beam structuring by means of surfi‐sculpt, an electron beam material processing technology, on different lightweight materials for the generation of form‐fit elements in plastic‐metal‐hybrid components to be used to join both materials by overmoulding are analysed. The analysis is performed by means of tensile shear test specimens.