Carbon-fiber composites offer numerous benefits to automotive manufacturers, such as weight reduction. However, they pose a wide variety of joining challenges to engineers, who must choose between mechanical fastening or adhesive bonding. Each assembly process has many pros and cons that must be evaluated.
Fasteners are a popular alternative, because strength is quite predictable vs. bonding and they require no time to cure or set. Threaded joints can also be serviced easily. But, many fastening issues still need to be addressed.