Papers by Author: Olga Sokolova

Abstract: High-performance metal/polymer/metal hybrid sandwich composites are attractive materials for lightweight constructions in automotive, aerospace and naval engineering world-wide. Due to the excellent combination of mechanical, thermal and elastic properties and, as a result of high forming potential, they can be used in areas of high vibration, where high damping properties of the polymer are demanded and at the same time high strength and stiffness are given by the metal. Disadvantages can be given in case of mechanical or thermal joining of these polymer-based sandwiches because of the elastic behaviour as well as low melting temperature of the polymer. Local metal plate insertions in the soft core at the place of joining can be a solution for such kind of problems. But forming behaviour of sandwich materials with and without local inlays differs strongly. Sandwich composites of that type were produced by roll-bonding. Their quality and their position were controlled by Lockin thermography. The forming behaviour of sandwiches with different geometry, size, type and the position of the inlays was tested by deep drawing and bending and analysed with the help of digital photogrammetry and compared to experimentally obtained mechanical properties. As a result, the local inlays, as well as their geometry, size and type strongly influence the forming limit conditions. The differences in flow behaviour of non-reinforced and reinforced sandwich regions after deep drawing and bending will be presented, as well as the influence of the position of the inlays.

Abstract: The production process and the forming behaviour of locally reinforced steel/polymer/steel (316L/PP-PE/316L) hybrid sandwich composite materials (SMS) have been investigated. The effect of simple plate reinforcements with different size, shape and geometry on the forming limits of SMS was studied. As a local reinforcement, the simple solid steel and mesh steel plate inlays with central and edge positions were chosen instead of a polymer core as a sandwich laminate. In order to increase the adhesion properties between the metal and polymer layers, corona discharge and plasma preliminary surface treatments were applied prior to the sandwich production. Both, deep drawing and stretching cup-forming tests were performed in order to analyse the forming behaviour as well as the failure of SMS with and without local inlays subject to different tensile loadings. The influence of the local reinforcement on the bending behaviour was determined by three and four-point bending processes. Stress-strain curves and thinning behaviour of SMS with local reinforcements under the different forming loads were determined using digital image correlation via photogrammetry. The forming behaviour strongly depends on the quality, geometry and size of the local plate inlays. Owing to the different positions of reinforcement as well as to the different polymer content around of inlays, failure of SMS by bending and drawing differs. The sandwich samples with mesh reinforcement demonstrate better formability by drawing and bending than that of samples with solid plates. In order to minimise the loss in formability of sandwich samples during deep drawing, the size of the centred reinforcement has to be larger than the punch diameter.

Abstract: The press joining rolling process used for the production of metal/polymer/metal systems is introduced. In the first step three-layer sandwich sheet, 316L/polypropylene- polyethylene/316L (316L/PP-PE/316L) with and without local reinforcement, were processed by roll bonding at approx. 250°C of two steel sheets with a pre-rolled PP-PE - core sheet. Mechanical and forming behaviour of the parts had been investigated by tensile, bending and deep drawing tests. It could be shown that for moderate drawing depths deep drawing behaviour is close to the one of the mono-material.