The present disclosure relates to a structure for electrically-connecting an external conductor. The structure comprises a wiring-substrate comprising a stack based arrangement of a plurality of layers, wherein said layers are defined as electrically conducting layers and insulating layer. A rivet is supported from the wiring substrate and comprises an embedded portion within the wiring substrate. The embedded portion comprises: an upper section extending through the stack of the plurality of layers, and, a bottom section extending laterally with reference to the upper section. A portion protruding from wiring substrate is provided for receiving an external-conductor and for thereby electrically connecting with the wiring substrate.

An additive friction stir fabrication method and system is described which may be used to fabricate and join a rib to a metallic substrate or to repair a defect in a metallic substrate through extrusion. The method may be carried out with or without the addition of preformed ribs. One such method involves feeding a friction-stir tool with a consumable filler material such that interaction of the friction-stir tool with the substrate generates plastic deformation at an interface between the friction-stir tool and a metallic substrate to bond the plasticized filler and substrate together and extrude this material through a forming cavity to form a rib joined to the metallic substrate. Further described is a system for fabricating a rib joined to a metallic substrate through extrusion.

A welding element is operable for being connected to a workpiece using a welding method. The welding element comprises: a head and a shaft like anchor portion. The head includes a welding surface, a stop surface that is remote from the welding surface, and a plurality of pointed projections evenly and uniformly distributed over the entire welding surface. The shaft-like anchor portion extends along a longitudinal axis between a first end region and a second end region, with the first end region connected to the stop surface.

An airfoil may include an airfoil body, a cover, and a stud. The cover may be disposed on at least one of a suction side and a pressure side of the airfoil body and the stud may extend through the cover and into the airfoil body and the stud may be is joined to the airfoil body and the cover by a friction weld.

The invention relates to a wheel intended for a motor vehicle, having a rim (2) made of a sheet of aluminium alloy that is fastened to the contour of a wheel disc (10) made from a steel sheet by assemblies that connect the aluminium, sheet of the rim and the steel sheet of the wheel disc, which overlap one another, the assemblies comprising connecting pins (20) that have a tip that passes through a hole in the aluminium sheet of the rim (2), the front end of which is welded to the steel sheet of the wheel disc (10), and a rear head that presses against the aluminium sheet of the rim about said hole.

A corrosion barrier for use under heads of a plurality of friction elements in a structural assembly and a method of installing the corrosion barrier are provided. The corrosion barrier defines a plurality of spaced apertures extending along a length of the corrosion barrier and a corresponding plurality of perforations concentrically located around the spaced apertures. A plurality of friction elements within a corresponding plurality of spaced apertures in a corrosion barrier forms a friction element strip assembly that is loaded into two workpieces. The two workpieces are joined together after an area of corrosion barrier is removed.

Some implementations of ignition-free welding include attaching fasteners to a tank, the tank having a wall, the wall having two parallel surfaces, the fasteners penetrating only one of the parallel surfaces, wherein the tank resides within a vicinity of a hazardous material, includes securing an appurtenance to the tank using the fasteners; and does not include removing the hazardous material.

A method for supplying, positioning and processing fixing elements using a transport means which moves the fixing elements from a starting position to a processing position whereby the individual fixing elements are introduced into a chuck provided with two clamping jaws, are held by the clamping jaws in an engaging position and, once the chuck has been positioned, are taken up from this position by a driving element and the chuck presses them against a locating device and a connection is made to a component part by the driving element when the chuck is opened, wherein the upward motion of the chuck, while feeding the fixing element to the locating device, prevents the supply of further fixing elements to the chuck.

Solid-state joining of preformed features, such as bosses, flanges, gaskets, centralizers and other features to substrates or cast parts by a solid-state MELD additive manufacturing process is disclosed. Joining can be between same or different materials using same, similar or dissimilar filler material than the materials of the feature and the part that need to be joined.

A composite component for a vehicle has a core layer made from a theiinoplastic plastic foam and at least one cover layer which is connected to the core layer. The core layer has a higher density in one region than the density of the semi-finished core layer. The cover layer formed from a fiber-reinforced plastic is connected in the region of higher density to at least one joining element by friction welding.