JOIN-EM

Global trends force industry to manufacture lighter, safer, more environmentally-friendly, more performant, and cheaper products. Due to its excellent thermal and electrical conductivity, copper is widely used in heating and cooling equipment and electrical devices. The rising demand caused the copper price to increase significantly. Solving the conflict between the technological benefits arising from the excellent properties of copper and the disadvantages regarding cost and weight is possible by substituting current full copper parts by copper-aluminium hybrid parts. Within JOIN’EM, such components will be produced by electromagnetic pulse welding (EMW). EMW is a high-speed joining technology using pulsed magnetic fields. The joint is formed without heat, but due to the impact of the joining partners. Disadvantages associated with conventional technologies are avoided and high-quality dissimilar material combinations can be joint. In JOIN’EM, strategies for the process and tool design shall be developed for joining copper-aluminium connections and for 2 other specific material combinations. Profile-shaped components as well as sheet metal applications will be regarded. For joint optimisation, surface preparation, design of the joint geometry, and other aspects will be investigated. A multi scale simulation strategy will be developed for determination of acting loads, deformation, impacting conditions, joint formation, and load capacity of the joint. Designing durable and efficient tools is an indispensable prerequisite for the industrial implementation of the technology and will be addressed in the project. The applicability of the process design strategy shall be validated based on industrial applications. Process and equipment design strategies will be evaluated in an industrial setting. This includes automation and quality control, economic efficiency calculations, life-cycle, and recycling issues, to demonstrate and quantify the advantages of EMW.