Investigation of integral endless fibre reinforced aluminium-polyamide 6 hybrid joints

Joining processes or connecting elements of structural components are generally used for integration into the automotive body structure. Joining operations cause a locally increased tension profile due to local punctual loads. Thus, a continous and homogenous load path of components to be joines is preferred. Therefore, glass fibre fabrics were imbedded in aluminium-polyamide 6 components by various moulding processes. Along the process chain of aluminium casting and injection moulding, integral endless fibre- reinforced aluminium-polyamide-6 vcomposites were manufactured. Tensile tests of Al-PA6 Test specimens with glass fibres were performed. For the aluminium casting process, low pressure die casting (LPDC) was used. The aluminium melt is moved, against gravity by pressurized nitrogen inducing high quality casting with low porosity, depressions and szhrinkage defects. The grip at the aluminium fibre interface results from microscopic undercuts between metal and fibre. In a second process step, glass fibres and aluminium parts were inserted into the injection moulding machine in which the glass fibres were infiltraded with PA6. Present investigations address non-destructive testing by microcomputer tomography (yCT) to investigate the infiltration of the glass fibres. For destructive methods bytensile testing, the breaking load is affected by the number of layers, infiltration behabiour, fibre orientation and AL-PA6- interface.