Analysis of Clamping Mechanism for Tailor Welded Blank Forming

Tailor welded blanks (TWBs) offer an excellent opportunity to reduce manufacturing costs, decrease vehicle weight, and improve the quality of auto body stampings. However, tearing near the weld line and wrinkling in the die addendum often occurs when a traditional forming process is used to fabricate this type of blank. Cao and Kinsey [1] proposed a modification to the stamping process where a mechanism would clamp on the weld line during the deep drawing process to improve the formability of TWBs. Critical to the success of this proposed modification is the ability of the clamping mechanism to perform its intended function and avoid creating adverse effects in the forming process. In this paper, numerical simulations verify the ability of the clamping mechanism to hold the weld line in place during forming and not severely deform the blank in the area of the clamping mechanism.