Mounting and Demounting Forces of Plastic Clip Fasteners

A company, supplying mounting material to the automotive industry, needed fast and reliable methods for designing clip connections. A main aspect was the prediction of mounting and demounting forces of their designs.

We applied the manufacturers Abaqus FE model, which used their 3D geometries of clips and took the contact with a pipe (to be mounted) into account. The critical aspect for predicting realistic mounting and demounting forces turned out to be the material model. We used their Abaqus Marlow model for pragmatic, straightforward computations. Additionally we applied a Z-mat material model for taking time dependent and cyclic effects into account. Material tests and model parameter identification were done by us in-house.