Composite materials such as fibre-reinforced polymers offer high strength and low weight benefits for applications in industries ranging
from automotive and aerospace to medicine, oil and gas, and renewable energy. Despite this, the take-up of fibre reinforced plastic composites has been hindered by the challenges associated with joining these materials to metals.
The strength of the joints between composites and metals often informs how they are used in engineering, but poor mechanical performance, low fatigue resistance, and a distrust of the joint’s repeatability and integrity have, until now, often led designers into over-conservativism.
However, a new solution for joining composites to metals looks set to make these concerns a thing of the past and increase the potential for the weight-saving benefits to be realised in even more applications…
