SERRATION MECHANISM OF AA5182/POLYPROPYLENE/AA5182 SANDWICH SHEETS

The AA5182/polypropylene/AA5182(AA/PP/AA) sandwich sheets have been developed for application to automotive body panels in future lightweight vehicles with significant weight reduction. It has been reported that the AA5182 aluminum sheet shows $L\"{u}ders$ band because of dissolved Mg atoms that cause fabrication process problem, especially surface roughness. The examination of serration behavior has been made after the tensile deformation of the AA/PP/AA sandwich sheets as well as that of the AA5182 aluminum skins at room and elevated temperatures. All sandwich sheets and the AA5182 aluminum skin showed serration behavior on their flow curves. However, the magnitude of serration was significantly diminished in the sandwich sheet with high volume fraction of the polypropylene core. According to the results of the analysis of the surface roughness following the tensile test, $L\"{u}ders$ band depth of the sandwich sheet evidently showed lower than that of the AA5182 aluminum skin. The strain rate sensitivity, m-value, of the AA5182 aluminum skin was -0.006. By attaching these skins to the polypropylene core, which has relatively large positive value of 0.050, m-value of the sandwich sheets changed to the positive value. The serration mechanism of the sandwich sheets was quantitatively investigated in the point of the effect on polypropylene thickness variation, that on the strain rate sensitivity and that on the localized stress state.