Production, characterisation and processing of metal plastic composites with modified core materials

Hybrid metal-plastic composites provide the possibility of combining lightweight design with high material stiffness. Modifications of the polymer core material and thickness influence the properties of the composite in case of damping properties for lower structure borne-sound, stiffness, basis weight and forming properties. The challenge of simulating a modified metal-plastic composite with different core materials in forming sim-ulations as well as acoustic simulations using standard FE material models is treated in this article. Therefore, a new metal-plastic composite with steel face sheets and a modified Polyamid 6 core was developed. To achieve a variability in core stiffness and adhesion properties the polymer was modified with ground tyre rubber in different fractions which additionally shows an economically way of tire recycling. For the men-tioned simulations the raw materials and the produced composites were characterised using different testing methods. The forming behaviour of the metal-plastic composites was investigated by folding with different radii. For rating the formability of the different composites the springback and the interface integrity were analysed. A significant influence of the core thickness and the core stiffness could be shown. The results of the performed FE simulations predict the experimental punch force displacement curves and the springback behaviour. The acoustic behaviour of the composite was investigated for different configurations of the core material. A steel plate of the same size was investigated as a reference model. The estimated radiated sound power (ERP) is calculated to characterize the acoustic properties of the samples.