The clinching process is more and more used in automotive design and manufacturing. Traditional quality inspection of joints needs a lot of destructive tests, which is time-consuming and material-consuming. In this paper, the clinching process and joints failure of dissimilar materials, 6061 aluminium alloy and HC340/590DP dual-phase steel, are studied. A two-dimensional finite element model is established. Experiments were carried out to verify the numerical model. Through the axial tensile test, the quality of clinched joints for upper steel-lower aluminium alloy and upper aluminium alloy-lower steel were measured, respectively, and the strength and safety of the joints met the requirements of design indexes. The conventional prediction model of maximum tensile force and its modified model was researched. Combined with numerical simulation results, the fracture load, the separation load, and the failure mode of two clinched joints were predicted, respectively. Furthermore, the results are in good agreement with the experimental results. The results show that the modified prediction model of maximum tensile force has a good prediction result, and the error rate is less than 10%. The modified prediction model of maximum tensile force can effectively predict the tensile failure test results, which provides a basis for the quality evaluation and strength prediction optimization of dissimilar materials clinched joints.

铆接工艺越来越多地用于汽车设计和制造。传统的接头质量检测需要进行大量破坏性试验，费时费力。本文研究了异种材料6061铝合金和HC340/590DP双相钢的铆接过程和接头失效。建立二维有限元模型。进行了实验以验证数值模型。通过轴向拉伸试验，分别测量了上钢-下铝合金和上铝合金-下钢铆接接头的质量，接头强度和安全性满足设计指标要求。研究了最大拉力的常规预测模型及其修正模型。结合数值模拟结果，分别预测了两个铆接接头的断裂载荷、分离载荷和失效模式。此外，结果与实验结果非常吻合。结果表明，修正后的最大拉力预测模型预测效果良好，误差率小于10%。修正后的最大拉力预测模型可以有效预测拉伸破坏试验结果，为异种材料铆接接头的质量评价和强度预测优化提供依据。结果表明，修正后的最大拉力预测模型预测效果良好，误差率小于10%。修正后的最大拉力预测模型可以有效预测拉伸破坏试验结果，为异种材料铆接接头的质量评价和强度预测优化提供依据。结果表明，修正后的最大拉力预测模型预测效果良好，误差率小于10%。修正后的最大拉力预测模型可以有效预测拉伸破坏试验结果，为异种材料铆接接头的质量评价和强度预测优化提供依据。