Advanced welding technologies for multi-material design

Global trends force the industry to manufacture lighter safer more environmentally friendly more performant and cheaper products. Combining conventional metals with others or even new materials offers designers solutions where a design consisting out of one material fails. A multi-material design exploits the material with desired properties for each part of the component or product. Multi-material design is however hindered by challenges in the field of joining technology. The prerequisite for the production of such multi-material components is the availability of suitable joining technologies. New developments for a range of welding processes has however provided the possibility to join dissimilar metals. The project “INNOJOIN” provides insight in new modern welding technologies for welding of dissimilar sheet metals and helped companies to identify the most suitable welding technology for their products.