Mechanical properties of extensible die clinched joints in titanium sheet materials

•Clinching of similar and dissimilar metal sheets of titanium, aluminum alloy and copper alloy has been studied.•The load-bearing capacity, energy absorption and failure modes of different clinched joints have been studied.•The normal hypothesis tests were performed to examine the rationality of the test data.

The mechanical properties of extensible die clinched joints in titanium sheet materials were investigated in this paper. Tensile–shear tests were carried out to characterize the mechanical properties of different clinched joints made of the similar titanium sheets and the dissimilar metal sheets combinations. The normal hypothesis tests were performed to examine the rationality of the test data. The load-bearing capacity, energy absorption and failure modes of different titanium sheets clinched joints were studied. Results showed that almost all titanium sheets clinched joints failed in the neck fracture mode. Results also showed that the load-bearing capacity and energy absorption of clinch joints with titanium as upper sheets are higher than that of the clinched joints with titanium as lower sheets.

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