Manufacturing industry profoundly impact economic and societal progress. As being a commonly accepted term for research centers and universities, the Industry 4.0 initiative has received a splendid attention of the business and research community. Although the idea is not new and was on the agenda of academic research in many years with different perceptions, the term “Industry 4.0” is just launched and well accepted to some extend not only in academic life but also in the industrial society as well. While academic research focuses on understanding and defining the concept and trying to develop related systems, business models and respective methodologies, industry, on the other hand, focuses its attention on the change of industrial machine suits and intelligent products as well as potential customers on this progress. It is therefore important for the companies to primarily understand the features and content of the Industry 4.0 for potential transformation from machine dominant manufacturing to digital manufacturing. In order to achieve a successful transformation, they should clearly review their positions and respective potentials against basic requirements set forward for Industry 4.0 standard. This will allow them to generate a well-defined road map. There has been several approaches and discussions going on along this line, a several road maps are already proposed. Some of those are reviewed in this paper. However, the literature clearly indicates the lack of respective assessment methodologies. Since the implementation and applications of related theorems and definitions outlined for the 4th industrial revolution is not mature enough for most of the reel life implementations, a systematic approach for making respective assessments and evaluations seems to be urgently required for those who are intending to speed this transformation up. It is now main responsibility of the research community to developed technological infrastructure with physical systems, management models, business models as well as some well-defined Industry 4.0 scenarios in order to make the life for the practitioners easy. It is estimated by the experts that the Industry 4.0 and related progress along this line will have an enormous effect on social life. As outlined in the introduction, some social transformation is also expected. It is assumed that the robots will be more dominant in manufacturing, implanted technologies, cooperating and coordinating machines, self-decision-making systems, autonom problem solvers, learning machines, 3D printing etc. will dominate the production process. Wearable internet, big data analysis, sensor based life, smart city implementations or similar applications will be the main concern of the community. This social transformation will naturally trigger the manufacturing society to improve their manufacturing suits to cope with the customer requirements and sustain competitive advantage. A summary of the potential progress along this line is reviewed in introduction of the paper. It is so obvious that the future manufacturing systems will have a different vision composed of products, intelligence, communications and information network. This will bring about new business models to be dominant in industrial life. Another important issue to take into account is that the time span of this so-called revolution will be so short triggering a continues transformation process to yield some new industrial areas to emerge. This clearly puts a big pressure on manufacturers to learn, understand, design and implement the transformation process. Since the main motivation for finding the best way to follow this transformation, a comprehensive literature review will generate a remarkable support. This paper presents such a review for highlighting the progress and aims to help improve the awareness on the best experiences. It is intended to provide a clear idea for those wishing to generate a road map for digitizing the respective manufacturing suits. By presenting this review it is also intended to provide a hands-on library of Industry 4.0 to both academics as well as industrial practitioners. The top 100 headings, abstracts and key words (i.e. a total of 619 publications of any kind) for each search term were independently analyzed in order to ensure the reliability of the review process. Note that, this exhaustive literature review provides a concrete definition of Industry 4.0 and defines its six design principles such as interoperability, virtualization, local, real-time talent, service orientation and modularity. It seems that these principles have taken the attention of the scientists to carry out more variety of research on the subject and to develop implementable and appropriate scenarios. A comprehensive taxonomy of Industry 4.0 can also be developed through analyzing the results of this review.

Literature review of Industry 4.0 and related technologies

An experimental investigation has been conducted on mechanically clinched joints, produced with fixed and extensible dies with different forming forces. Mechanical testing involving single lap shear tests, both with one and two joining points, and peeling tests were conducted under quasi-static conditions to assess the different mechanical behaviors of these joints. The effect of the processing conditions on the main mechanical response of the joints, namely the maximum strength, stiffness and absorbed energy, was investigated. The results showed that the joints produced with the extensible die exhibited a similar strength as compared to those produced with the fixed die in single lap shear tests, while they are characterized by a higher strength (up to 40%) when loaded during the peeling test because of a larger interlock. In addition, the employment of extensible dies allows a drastic reduction of the forming loads as compared to those required by adopting the fixed dies.

An experimental study on clinched joints realized with different dies

https://tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14686996.2017.1320930

Clinching for sheet materials

Mechanical joining technologies are increasingly used in multi-material lightweight constructions and offer opportunities to create versatile joining processes due to their low heat input, robustness to metallurgical incompatibilities and various process variants. They can be categorised into technologies which require an auxiliary joining element, or do not require an auxiliary joining element. A typical example for a mechanical joining process with auxiliary joining element is self-piercing riveting. A wide range of processes exist which are not requiring an auxiliary joining element. This allows both point-shaped (e.g., by clinching) and line-shaped (e.g., friction stir welding) joints to be produced. In order to achieve versatile processes, challenges exist in particular in the creation of intervention possibilities in the process and the understanding and handling of materials that are difficult to join, such as fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) or high-strength metals. In addition, predictive capability is required, which in particular requires accurate process simulation. Finally, the processes must be measured non-destructively in order to generate control variables in the process or to investigate the cause-effect relationship. This paper covers the state of the art in scientific research concerning mechanical joining and discusses future challenges on the way to versatile mechanical joining processes. 

Review on mechanical joining by plastic deformation

To facilitate the die selection for new self-piercing riveting (SPR) joint configurations, it is necessary to find out how the critical die geometric parameters influence the SPR process. In this study, a two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric simulation model was developed to numerically study the riveting process. The influences of the die type, the die diameter, the die depth, and the die pip height on the deformation behaviour of the rivet and sheets were systematically studied. Moreover, the flared rivet shank radius and the thickness at the centre of the bottom sheet during the SPR process were first monitored using the developed simulation model. The simulation results revealed that these die parameters have significant influences on the deformation behaviour of the rivet and sheets. The flared rivet shank radius showed an increasing trend with the increment of the die diameter and the die pip height, while it decreased with the increment of the die depth. Furthermore, it was also found that the flaring speed of the rivet shank depended heavily on the filling condition of the die cavity underneath the rivet cavity. A rapid flare of the rivet shank was observed when this space was fully filled.

/pdf/effects-of-the-die-parameters-on-the-self-piercing-riveting-3dhz66v05w.pdf

Effects of the die parameters on the self-piercing riveting process

Mechanical joining technologies are becoming increasingly important with the trend towards light and multi-material designs in the automotive industry. Providing robust connection techniques will be of particular importance. Thus, rejection rates are reduced and costs are cut in the parts production. This paper discusses the example of clinching and its potentials and limits concerning FEM based sensitivity analysis and optimization for the joining by forming technology. By determining the sensitivity of the design for relevant connection parameters, the most important values for the optimization of the forming die are derived. On this basis, both, appropriate tools for a particular material combination and other tools for the joining of different thicknesses and sheet materials are designed. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis of uncertain variables allows to evaluate the robustness of the clinching process in production. Based on these results, methods to increase process robustness or process monitoring in terms of quality assurance can be derived.

Unerring Planning of Clinching Processes through the Use of Mathematical Methods

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/538154.pdf

Concept for Further Development of Self-pierce Riveting by Using Cyber Physical Systems☆

Gathering of Process Data through Numerical Simulation for the Application of Machine Learning Prognosis Algorithms

In multi-material-design, e.g. in the automotive industry, mechanical joining processes like self-pierce riveting are well established, because of their amount of advantages. However, adhesive bonding with one-component structural adhesives is increasingly being used. The combination of the specific advantages of both joining techniques in the form of hybrid joints leads to synergies of quality and reliability, such as high corrosion resistance and better damping properties. A critical issue is the generation of global deformations of the different parts of the mechanical joints. These global deformations of the sheet metal between two or more mechanical connectors (e.g. rivets) are caused by the formation of adhesive bags during the riveting process, before the adhesive curing takes place. This research focuses on the time-dependent formation process of these bags. The aim is to achieve a reduction of global deformations based on detailed knowledge of the adhesive flow during the manufacturing of the joint by means of experiments and simulations. For this purpose experimental techniques and measurement methods for deformations over time are presented for different setups of hybrid joint types of self-piercing rivets in combination with adhesive bonding. The challenge is to track rapid and small surface deformations very accurately in the ongoing mechanical joining process. High-speed optical measurement technology like Point-Tracking and surface scanning are used to track the resulting deformations experimentally. Numerical investigations, which include the interaction of the solid matter influenced in the mechanical joining process and the fluid adhesive, are presented. On the basis a fully coupled fluid-structure interaction simulation of a single hybrid joint, a surrogate model for a multi-point hybrid joint is developed. The comparison of experimental data with simulations allows deriving the pressure distribution and flow velocities inside the adhesive layer. The influence of various parameters can be interpreted based on the physics of the interacting system, ultimately resulting in optimization helpful to the automotive industry.

Tobias Falk

Papers

Unerring Planning of Clinching Processes through the Use of Mathematical Methods

Concept for Further Development of Self-pierce Riveting by Using Cyber Physical Systems☆

Gathering of Process Data through Numerical Simulation for the Application of Machine Learning Prognosis Algorithms

Adhesive Distribution and Global Deformation between Hybrid Joints

Development of a New Self-flaring Rivet Geometry Using Finite Element Method and Design of Experiments