Investigation on Formability of Tailor-Welded Blanks in Incremental Forming

Abstract

Steel laser tailor-welded blanks (TWBs) are produced by end-to-end joining of base sheets using different welding methods. In this article, the formability of laser TWBs of St12 and St14 with thicknesses of 1 mm and 1.5 in single point incremental forming process were experimentally and numerically investigated. First, the forming limit wall angle was experimentally determined for each of the base sheets. Then, SPIF of TWBs samples was carried out at the thinner sheet wall angle; 67°. For numerical investigation, the mechanical properties of the weld zone were obtained. For one combination of TWBs, the finite element (FE) simulation of incremental forming was performed by the use of ABAQUS/Explicit FE software. The simulation process was validated by comparing the results with those of experiments. Then, the effect of SPIF on thickness, stress and strain distribution of other combinations of TWBs was numerically investigated. The results showed that using the FE model, the SPIF of TWBs without performing high cost experimental tests can be properly investigated. Also, the results revealed that in steel laser TWBs with different thicknesses, the maximum and minimum principal strains are concentrated at the corners and the walls of the thinner sheet of TWBs, respectively. Hence, the maximum amount of effective strain is concentrated at the thinner side of TWBs corners and the weld zone of the two blanks. For the same reason, rupture is observed at these regions.

Structural and Behaviour Optimization of Tubular Structures Made of Tailor Welded Blanks by Applying Taguchi and Genetic Algorithms Methods

“…This effect is caused by the fact that the thermally affected area has a higher modulus of elasticity. A high value of the modulus of elasticity and the yield strength has opposite effects on the springback [10][11][12]. TWBs are widely used in the production of household goods, packaging, or construction.…”

Experimental and Finite Element Analysis of Single Stage Single Point Incremental Forming

“…Experiment and FEA was carried out by Neto et al [21] using circular path and found that stress and strain FEA results are in good agreement with experimental results. Researchers used analysis software like ABAQUS [22][23], LS-DYNA [24] for predicting different output parameters efficiently. Shrivastava and Tandon [25] employed Radioss as a solver for explicit simulation and HyperView and Hypergraph for post processing.…”