Joining by forming in the body-in-white structure - state of the art and outlook

There are common joining by forming technologies with pre-hole and without. The inexpensive direct joining processes without pre-hole are most interesting. Standard techniques and variants of clinching and self-pierce-riveting are discussed in confrontation to new variants, like dieless joining and hydrojoining. Characteristics of spot joinings are shown, e.g. stiffness, strength and corrosion. An example of testing is thermal analysis. FE-methods are used on one hand during development of joining technologies and on the other hand in characteristic analysis of structures.