Laser Surface Pre-treatment of Aluminium for Hybrid Joints with Glass Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastics

Lightweight construction is a major trend in the automotive industry. The connection of fibre reinforced plastics with aluminium is consequently seen as promising prospect. In this regard, thermal joining can be applied for bonding of such hybrid joints. But in order to create a load bearing metal plastic joint, the surface of the metal has to be pre-treated. Recent research has shown that with laser surface pre-treatment high joint strengths are obtained. Yet there are a variety of laser sources and manufacturable surface topographies with structure sizes ranging from macroscopic to nanoscopic profiles. Within this work, macroscopic, microscopic and nanoscopic laser processed structures are created on aluminium and consequently joined to glass fibre reinforced thermoplastics of different fibre length and fibre content. High shear tensile strengths of up to 42 N/mm(2) were obtained depending on the allocated material and the surface pre-treatment. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.