Experimental Investigation of the Springback Characteristics of Tailor-Welded Strips in U-bending

용접판재의 U-벤딩시 스프링백 특성에 관한 실험적 연구

Sheet or plate bending is one of the most important industrial metal forming processes. And considerable attention has been focused on gaining a better understanding of many of bending characteristics. One of defaults in bending process is the springback. In this study, the springback characteristics of tailor-welded strips in U-bending process was investigated. Furthermore, not only the relationships between the springback and the process variables such as the geometry of the tools and thickness combination of workpiece but also the heat effect which affects the springback due to welding process was experimentally considered. First, tailor-welded strips are joined by the laser welding process and consisted of two types of thickness combinations of the SCPI sheet, 0.8t${\times}$1.2t and 0.8${\times}$1.6t to investigate the effect of different thickness combination on the springback. Secondly, two different directionally welded strips, one was welded along the centerline of the strip-width and the other was along the centerline of strip-length, were adopted to compare the effects of the location of weld line on the springback. And three punch profile radii of 3, 9, and 15 m were used. Some cases of the experimental results were simulated by using a commercial FEM code, PAM-STAMP to compare the experimental results to the analytical ones.