Patent ID: 8448324

Claim:
A method for forming a corrosion-resistant joint in an assembly of two or more overlapping sheets, where at least one of the sheets comprises an alloy of magnesium comprising at least 85% by weight of magnesium, each sheet having a top surface and a bottom surface, the method comprising: assembling the sheets to have a planar overlapping region in which a bottom surface of one sheet lies in face to face contact with a top surface of an underlying sheet, the planar overlapped region having a top surface of an uppermost sheet and a bottom surface of a lowermost sheet; deforming the sheets over at least a portion of the overlapped region to displace overlapping sheet material out of the plane of the overlapping planar region and to form a hole in the displaced material, the displaced sheet material thereby having interlocking features that mechanically resist sliding of the deformed sheets along their contacting faces, the hole having a shape and a dimension; inserting through the hole, an elongated, deformable, fiber reinforced polymer body, the polymer body having a length, a cross-section of complementary shape to the shape of the hole, and a cross-section dimension smaller than the hole dimension; locating the deformable polymer body in the hole so that suitable portions of the length of the body extend on either side the deformed sheets to provide attachment material for joining the overlapping sheets; and upsetting the ends of the deformable body to form two heads, each positioned on one end of the deformable body, each head having an underside; and continuing to upset the ends of the deformable, fiber-reinforced polymer body until the underside of one head contacts the top surface of the overlapped region and the underside of the second head contacts the bottom surface of the overlapped region.