• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.125-132
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• 2002

Recently, ULSAB(Ultra Light Steel Auto Body) concept is getting more attention due to various benefits in automotive body design. One of the ULSAB efforts is making a door with TWB(Tailor Welded Blanks). In TWB, two or more patches of steel panels are welded together before stamping process. In this research, domains and thicknesses of the patches in a front door structure are determined by a series of optimization schemes composed of topology, size and shape optimization and DOE(Design of Experiments) scheme. A door is designed to have better performances compared to exiting structure considering static stiffness and natural frequency. The final design is discussed and compared to the existing design.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.181-189
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• 2001

For the Tailor Welded Blank sheet used fur automobile body panel, the characteristics of fatigue crack propagation behavior were studied. The thickness of specimen was machined to be same (0.9+0.9mm) and different (0.9+2.0mm). As a base test, mechanical properties around welding zone were examined. The results indicated that there were no significant decreases in mechanical properties, but hardness around welding bead is 2.3 times greater than base material. The crack propagation rate was noticeably decreased around welding line and rapidly increased as it passed by welding line. Reviewing the shape of the crack propagation, crack width around welding line was wide around the welding zone due to retardation of crack growth, but it became narrow passing welding line due to decreased toughness. Elasto-Plastic analysis was performed by finite element analysis fur explaining the test results.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.3-9
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• 2000

The new FLD of the laser welded blank, which includes FLCs of welded zone and base metals, is introduced. For the forming limits of welded zone, the hemispherical dome punch tests were performed with various widths of asymmetric specimen. The FLC0 as well as the dome height at fracture associated with various specimen widths in the same and different thickness combinations were found to see the formability depending on thickness combinations. In order to show the application of the new FLD, the measured strains of squared cup drawing and simulated strains of door inner panel stamping were compared with those of FLCs. The successful prediction of fracture in the applications reveals that the forming limits of welded zone and base metals should be separately found for more accurate evaluation of the formability and workability of the laser welded blank.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.146-153
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• 2007

Weight reduction for automobile components has been sought to achieve fuel efficiency and energy conservation. There are two approaches in reducing their weights. One is by using material lighter than steel, and the other is by redesigning their structures. The latter has been performed by adopting hydroforming, tailor weled blank, optimization, etc. In this research, the kriging approximation method and simulated annealing algorithm are applied to the design of a front door made by TWB (Tailor Welded Blank) technology. The design variables are set up as the thicknesses of parts and the positions of parting lines. A thickness set considered as a design variable of each part is not arbitrarily determined but selected from standard products, so it is a discrete set. This research presents the discrete and continuous structural optimization method for an automotive door design.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.142-150
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• 2001

Automotive manufactures have taken more interests in tailored sheet metals for improving the rigidity, weight reduction, crash durability, and cost savings so that their application to auto-bodies has been increased. However, since the tailored sheet metals do not behave like un-welded sheet metals in press forming operations, the stamping engineers no longer rely only on conventional forming techniques. Futhermore, there is no clear understanding of the characteristics of welded metal which influence the overall press formability of tailored sheet metals. Recently, the computer simulations are prevailing for the evaluation of the formability. Unfortunately, the mechanical property of tailored sheet metal has to be quantitatively defined in the simulation. In this study, the analytical equations are formulated in order to find the mechanical properties of the welded metal in the tailored sheet metal welded by co$_2$laser. Based on force distribution assumption, the constitutive behavior of the welded metal is investigated using uniaxial tensile test results of base metals and tailored sheet metal. Then, the strength coefficient, work-hardening exponent, and plastic strain ratio of laser-welded metal are calculate from those of base metals and tailored sheet metal. In addition, the existence of weld defects in the welded metal is indirectly detected by examining the slop of strength coefficient of the welded metal.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Mechanical Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.105-112
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• 2011

Increasing needs for light weight and high safety in modern automobiles induced the wide application of high strength steels in automotive body structures- The main difficulty in the forming of sheet metal parts with high strength steel is the large amount of springback including sidewall curl and twist in channel shaped member parts- Among these shape defects, twist occurs frequently and requires numerous reworks on the dies to compensate the shape deviation- But until now, it seems to be no effective method to reduce the twist in the forming processes- In this study, a new forming process to reduce the twist deformation during the forming of automotive structural member was suggested- This method consists of forming and restriking of embosses on the sidewall around the stretch flanging area of the part- and was applied in the forming process design of an automotive front side inner member with high strength steel- To evaluate the effectiveness of the method, springback analysis using $Pamstampa^{tm}$ was done- Through the analysis results, the suggested method was proven to be effective in twist reduction of channel shaped parts with stretch flanging area.