Latest developments in the clinching of sheet materials are reviewed in this article. Important issues are discussed, such as tool design, process parameters and joinability of some new lightweight sheet materials. Hybrid and modified clinching processes are introduced to a general reader. Several unaddressed issues in the clinching of sheet materials are identified.
Keywords: 10 Engineering and Structural materials; 303 Mechanical / Physical processing; 402 Multi-scale modeling; Clinching; clinching joinability; hybrid clinching; lightweight sheet material; modified clinching.