During this year’s FOREL Colloquium on September 29th, 2019 in Dresden, the project results of the FOREL project PROLEI (funding code: 02P16Z003, duration: 01.09.2016 to 31.08.2019) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research were presented to the public. Goal of the joint research project “Process chain for joining continous fibre-reinforced plastics with metals – PROLEI” was the research of adapted joining technologies for plastic-metal hybrid constructions in lightweight structures. This encompassed the implementation of a laser-based large-area structuring process for joining surfaces, the industrialization of robot-guided direct joining of thermoset plastics, the robot-based friction-press joining of thermoplastic-metal compounds as well as the development of simulation models for the hybrid joining of thermoplastic-metal compounds.
Together with its partners AIRBUS, ARGES, Volkswagen, the Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb) of the Technical University of Munich, the Laboratory for Material and Joining Technology (LWF) of the University of Paderborn, inpro developed new joining technologies suitable for mass production for economical plastic-metal hybrid solutions. In particular, inpro was responsible for the simulation-based design of plastic-metal hybrid compounds and, together with the LWF, for their experimental testing.
At the end of the project, the project results were summarized in three presentations in Dresden:
• Laser-based surface pretreatment of metals using innovative scanner optics for metal-plastic compounds,
• Robot-assisted application of thermoset semi-finished products to metallic body structures for mass production,
• Friction press joining and pretreatment of metal composite hybrid components.
The project team intends to make the final report on the PROLEI joint research project public by the end of this year.