A Novel Tensile Testing Method to Characterize the Weld Metal Properties for Laser Welded Blank (LWB) with AHSS

The automotive industry applies Laser Welded Blanks (LWB) to increase the material utilization and light-weighting of the vehicle structure. This paper introduces a novel tensile testing method to characterize the hardening behavior of the weld material with a digital image correlation (DIC) and apply it as a constitutive hardening model in forming simulations with the LWBs of GEN3 steel. Formability tests under biaxial conditions were performed with LWB of GEN3 steel. Experimental results were correlated with finite element analysis (FEA) predictions that were conducted with and without the weld material model. The results show the weld material model for the LWB improves the accuracy of FEA predictions of both necking failures on the base metal as well as cracking on the weld.