Fatigue and failure mechanism in carbon fiber reinforced plastics/aluminum alloy single lap joint produced by electromagnetic riveting technique

Electromagnetic riveting (EMR) process is suitable for composite joining due to small damage. In this paper, the EMR experiments were conducted to obtain the fatigue samples. Specimens with normalized driven head dimensions were tested to obtain the fatigue behaviors. The experimental results showed that the driven head dimensions had a remarkable effect on fatigue property. The fatigue life increased first and then decreased with the increasing of D/D0 (D and D0 are the diameters of rivet driven head and original shaft, respectively). The electromagnetic riveted specimens with D/D0 = 1.5 had the best fatigue properties. The fatigue failure analysis showed that the specimens had three typical fatigue failure modes: failure in the rivet, failure in the Al sheet and failure in the CFRP and Al sheets as influenced by driven head dimensions and stress levels.