Environmental Friendly Joining of Tubes

Abstract

This chapter introduces an innovative and environmental friendly joining technology for connecting tubes and fixing tubes to sheet panels that can successfully eliminate existing technologies based on fasteners, welding and structural adhesive bonding in standard or user made types of connections. The proposed joining technology is built upon compression beading of thin-walled tubes at room temperature and in some cases may also involve flaring the tube ends. In terms of deformation mechanics, the aim of this chapter is to identify the main parameters, to diagnose possible sources of failure and to understand the route for selecting the most appropriate operative conditions for obtaining sound joints between tubes and between tubes and sheet panels. The joining technology to be presented in this chapter is suitable for mass production and copes with the growing agile manufacturing trends and sustainability issues requiring flexibility, short life-cycles, very short development and production lead times. Emphasis is placed on tooling systems, finite element modeling and experimentation with the objective of presenting a wide range of engineering applications involving custom sizes and dissimilar materials (e.g. metals and polymers) and showing the flexibility and cost effectiveness of the proposed technology.