The development and scalability of a high strength, damage tolerant, hybrid joining scheme for composite-metal structures

Advanced hybrid joints, which incorporate a specially designed array of macro-scale pins that provide mechanical interlocking reinforcement, have been developed in order to address the challenges associated with joining fibre reinforced composites to metals. In the present work, important joint characteristics including strength, mechanical fatigue, damage tolerance and durability have been studied and discussed. The results indicate that with advanced hybrid joints it is possible to achieve the benefits of the respective bonded and bolted systems but with virtually zero net weight gain, or conceivably a weight reduction as the increased performance of the hybrid scheme could facilitate smaller joints. The authors also present initial results from a comprehensive manufacturing and scalability trial, and demonstrate that low-cost, large-scale manufacture of hybrid joints is now feasible.