An Analytical Model for Tailor Welded Blank Forming

Abstract

Tailor Welded Blanks (TWBs) offer several notable benefits including decreased part weight, reduced manufacturing costs, increased environmental friendliness, and improved dimensional consistency. In order to take advantage of these benefits, however, designers need to overcome the reduced formability of TWBs and be able to accurately predict unique characteristics related to TWB forming early in the design process. In this paper, an analytical model to predict the weld line movement and forming height for a uniform binder force, TWB forming application is presented. Comparison to numerical simulation results demonstrates the accuracy of this methodology. The analytical model provides designers a valuable tool to determine the location of steps on the die surface to accommodate the weld line movement and the potential forming height for a TWB forming with a uniform binder force. The methodology presented here has the potential to be extended to analyze a non-uniform binder force forming of TWBs.