New Apparatus and Method for Forming Tailor Welded Blanks

Tailor welded blanks offer a unique opportunity to reduce manufacturing costs, decrease vehicle weight, and improve the quality of stampings through the consolidation of multiple formed, then welded, parts into a single stamping. However, tearing near the weld line often occurs in this type of blank when formed with a traditional deep drawing process. Therefore, some adaptation to the existing sheet metal forming process must be developed in order to reap the numerous benefits available from tailor welded blanks. In this paper, numerical simulation are presented for a newly contrived tailor welded blank forming process where several hydraulic mechanisms apply distinct clamping forces along the weld line during forming. Excellent results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.