Abstract. Electric Resistance Hot-driven Riveting is a new alternative spot joining process developed for polymer multi-materials structures. In the technique, a cylindrical metallic rivet is used to join one or more thermoplastic components by means of forming rivet heads on both sides of connected joint through pressure and resistance heat, which has the advantages of both mechanical rivet and resistance spot welding. In this paper, the experiments for ABS thermoplastic materials were carried out by Electric Resistance Hot-driven Riveting process, which can be clearly distinguished three stages: the cold riveting deformation, hot riveting molding and steady deformation, by acquiring and analyzing the change in the base material temperature, electrical current, voltage, electrode displacement in the riveting process. Also, mechanical property and failure mode of the joint at different duty cycles have been carried out and analyzed, shown the maximum strength of which can be up to 79% of that of base material, and indicated that Electric Resistance Hot-driven Riveting of ABS thermoplastic materials could obtain the joint of significant mechanical property, and verified that Electric Resistance Hot-driven Riveting would become a promising thermoplastic material connection method.

ABSTRACT Dissimilar materials jointing is an increasingly important method to get lightweight construction in the development of nowadays manufacturing industry. In this article, ABS plastic and Q235 steel overlap jointing was achieved by means of RSW (Resistance Spot Welding). we studied the effects of the main process parameters, welding current, welding time and electrode force, on joint shaping and strength, and the result showed that in the range of 0.9kA~1.3kA, 4~6s, 0.1~0.4Mpa, elegant and strong lap joints were obtained. With the heat input getting higher, the effective lap area of joint become larger and the strength are improved, whereas the high input makes the welding joint shape worse and deformation in ABS get aggravating critically. Besides, Ultrasonic Assistance was used in experiment to aid welding process based on its high-frequency ultrasonic vibration, which made joints shaping better and improved tensile strength visibly contrast to joints with the same lower heat input parameters.