Over the past several decades, the average weight of passenger vehicles has steadily increased mainly due to the introduction of more safety, convenience and luxury features. In order to meet environmentally driven governmental regulations on fuel consumptions and emissions (CO2), the automotive industry is continuously looking for ways to limit the weight increase of the next generation vehicles. In this connection, structural components made out of aluminium alloys represents one of the more attractive alternatives since they may provide considerable weight savings at a reasonable cost penalty as compared to other materials alternative to steel. Some examples on structural aluminium applications in the automotive industry are bumper beams, crash boxes, engine cradles, cockpit frames, rear sub-frames, space-frames, etc. As compared to mild steel, extrusion-based aluminium bumpers offer approximately 45-50 % weight saving at similar or better crash performance. Unlike steel, aluminium is an 'engineered' material, whose properties are greatly influenced by the thermo-mechanical processing throughout the process route. Successful application of aluminium alloys requires process control and process thinking from the very beginning of a development project. Hydro Aluminium Automotive Structures has developed a new, innovative forming method to improve accuracy of parts with 3D configurations, like the A- pillar for the Cadillac XLR (2003) and Chevrolet Corvette C6 (2004). The component is being joined to other members of the frame at each end using MIG welding, which requires gap between parts of less than 0.5 mm. The bending setup is a so-called flexible, three-dimensional stretch bender with three perpendicular pivot axes that can be moved during bending to ensure optimum forming conditions. An in-house software code is developed to synchronize the movements of each axis with respect to time. This code can be used to optimize the tension needed to obtain proportional loading during bending, meaning that the tension increases nearly linearly from start towards the end of bending.


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    Titel :

    Bumper system designs based on formed aluminium extrusions


    Weitere Titelangaben:

    Gestaltung von Stossfängersystemen aus umgeformten Aluminium-Strangpressprofilen


    Beteiligte:
    Welo, Torgeir (Autor:in) / Holthe, Ragnar (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2005


    Format / Umfang :

    10 Seiten, 8 Bilder, 2 Quellen


    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Konferenz)


    Format :

    Print


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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