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As important light-weight structure material, aluminum alloys have been widely used in automotive and aerospace industries. In the last years, the manufacturing of parts with high strength and good dimensional accuracy has become the main objective in industrial applications. Within the available aluminum alloys, the 7xxx series has attract the interest of the industrial designers due to the high yield strength and ultimate tensile strength they present. However, the formability of these alloys in as-received industrial condition is very poor at room temperature and various studies are being carried out to develop efficient warm and hot forming processes to form them industrially using heated tools. In the present paper, the W-Temper forming is studied as an alternative to the warm and hot forming processes. Heat treatment temperatures and critical times are presented and an industrial B-Pillar is formed to validate the new process. In the last chapter, the final mechanical properties of the part are reported, before and after a virtual e-coat process where the W-Temper forming is compared with a hot stamping process.

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Abstract. In this work the formability of a high strength aluminium alloy (AA7075-T6) for the stamping of an automotive component has been studied. Due to the low formability of the selected alloy, two different heat assisted forming strategies have been analysed. On the one hand, the W-temper process, where the thermal process is carried out prior to the forming operation. On the other hand, the hot stamping process, where the thermal process is carried out at the same time as the forming. The results showed that both technology were able to form the component avoiding any failure of the material. On the contrary, both processes reduced the final mechanical properties of the material compared to the as received material condition. However, the obtained mechanical properties doubled the strength of commonly used 5xxx and 6xxx aluminium alloys.

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The aim of this work is to show the influence of defining a pressure dependent friction coefficient on numerical springback predictions of a DX54D mild steel, a HSLA380 and a DP780 high strength steel. The pressure dependent friction model of each material was fitted to the experimental data obtained by Strip Drawing tests and then implemented in the numerical simulation of an industrial automotive part drawing process. The results showed important differences between defining a pressure dependent or a constant friction coefficient. Finally, the experimental part was produced to compare the real geometry with the predictions obtained with the different simulation strategies. An improvement of 20-25% in springback prediction was achieved when using the pressure dependent friction model.

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