Aluminum Structured Vehicle Technology-A Comprehensive Approach to Vehicle Design and Manufacturing in Aluminum

A proven design and manufacturing system for building automotive structural frames and unibody structures in adhesively bonded sheet aluminum is described. The system, which was developed to be compatible with established procedures and facilities for building spot-welded steel vehicles, allows the weight of such vehicle body structures to be reduced by almost half, yet provides structures of similar rigidity, excellent resistance to fatigue and corrosion attack and has been proven through evaluation tests carried out on replicas of production cars built using the technology. While developed for manufacturing automobile structures from adhesively bonded stamped sheet, adaptation of this technology to the construction of adhesively bonded perimeter and tubular structural frames is also described.