For reasons of sustainability and costeffectiveness,
efficient joining processes should be applied to
manufacture components for electrical applications. A suitable
joining technology for this purpose is clinching. This joining
technology is already being used for mechanical applications
such as joining car body parts or housings. Only in a few
applications, clinching is used for current-carrying connections
so far. In order to exploit the possible potential of electrical
applications, the design of clinch joints and the evaluation
criteria must be evolved. For defining the designs of clinch joints
for electrical applications, it is necessary to gain a deeper
understanding of the contact behavior. Therefore, FE-Models
were built considering a detailed geometric description of the
characteristic areas of the clinch joints. For these areas, a
specific Electrical-Contact-Conductance (ECC) was assigned,
which maps the contact behavior. The parameterization was
validated experimentally. With the FE-Models, the portions of
bulk resistance and contact resistance as part of the joint
resistance could be determined as well as the relevant current
paths in the clinch joints. The results of this study lead to a better
understanding of the contact behavior and is a basis for
optimization of clinch joints. For the investigated clinch joints,
it was found that the highest ECC values have to be set in the
bottom-area, in which, in some cases, only a small percentage of
the current commutates between the contact partners.