Deep drawing simulation of Tailored Blanks

Abstract

Tailored blanks are increasingly used in the automotive industry. A tailored blank consists of different metal parts, which are joined by a welding process. These metal parts usually have different material properties. Hence, the main advantage of using a tailored blank is to provide the right material properties at specific parts of the blank. The movement of the weld during forming is extremely important. Unwanted weld displacement can cause damage to both the product and the tool. This depends mainly on the original weld position and the process parameters. However experimental determination of the optimum weld position is quite expensive. Therefore a numerical tool has been developed for simulations of tailored blank forming. The Finite Element Code Dieka is used for the deep drawing simulations of some geometrically simple products. The results have been validated by comparing them with experimental data and show a satisfactory correlation