The application of aluminum tailor-welded blanks offers significant potential for reducing the weight of future automobiles, and improvements are being made in the development and understanding of the welding process. There are several geometric and internal weld features that make the complete numerical description of tailor-welded blank forming challenging. The variation of the experimental formability results found in the literature for aluminum tailor-welded blanks appears to be large, and a combined theoretical tensile instability and statistical analysis of internal weld porosity may explain at least some of the variation reported. Aluminum-sheet stampings are being increasingly applied in high volume hang-on applications, including hoods, decklids, and liftgates, with considerable interest in door stampings as well. Automotive engineers have also been successful in reducing weight, reducing part count, streamlining the assembly process, and reducing costs by taking advantage of singular steel tailored blanks to replace multiple blanks that would have to be separately stamped and assembled. The same opportunities exist for aluminium tailored blanks, with added weight savings. Potential applications of aluminum tailored blanks extend to body-in-white stampings. Aluminum tailor-welded blanks (TWBs) consist of multiple thickness (and sometimes multiple alloy) sheet materials that are welded together into a single, multiple-gauge blank. Welding thin-sheet aluminum alloy offers a new challenge to the industry. The combination of aluminum's high reflectivity, low molten viscosity, and inherent oxide layer offers a new challenge to conventional laser welding systems, and as a result, aluminum is reported to have a high propensity to form porosity and cracks internal to the weld material. For these and other reasons, significant effort is being expended throughout the industry to develop aluminum welding techniques that produce consistently reliable ductility in the weld material. Three candidate weld technologies working toward high-volume implementation are laser methods, non vacuum electron-beam (NVEB) welding, and gas-tungsten arc welding (GTAW). This article discusses the experimental characterization of NVEB welding and GTAW with an emphasis on the autogeneous GTA-welded AA5182-0 sheet materials.


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    Title :

    Characterizing Al tailored-welded blanks for automotive applications


    Additional title:

    Charakterisierung von geschweißten Aluminiumblechzuschnitten für den Fahrzeugbau


    Contributors:
    Davies, R.W. (author) / Oliver, H.E. (author) / Smith, M.T. (author) / Grant, G.J. (author)


    Publication date :

    1999


    Size :

    4 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 9 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English





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