• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.512-517
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• 2011

TRB(Tailor Rolled Blank) is an emerging manufacturing technology by which engineers are able to change blank thickness continuously within a sheet metal. TRB door inner panels with required larger thicknesses can be used to support localized high loads. In this study, the aluminum alloy 5J32 TRB sheet is used for a door inner panel application. The TRB material properties were varied by using three heat treatment conditions. In order to predict the failure of the aluminum TRB during simulation, the forming limit diagram, which is used in sheet metal forming analysis to determine the criterion for failure, was investigated. Full-field photogrammetric measurement of the TRB deformation was performed with an ARAMIS 3D system. A FE model of the door inner panel was created using Autoform software. The material properties obtained from the tensile tests were used in the numerical model to simulate the door inner of AA 5J32 for each heat treatment condition. After finite element analysis for the evaluation of formability, a prototype front door panel was manufactured using a hydraulic press.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.174-185
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• 2002

The automotive industry faces many competitive challenges including weight and cost reduction to meet need for higher fuel economy. Tailored blanks offer the opportunity to decrease door weight, reduce manufacturing costs, and improve door stiffness. Optimization technology is applied to the inner panel of a door which is made by tailored blanks. The design of tailored blanks door starts from an existing door. At first, the hinge reinforcement and inner reinforcement are removed to use tailored blanks technology. The number of parts and the welding lines are determined from intuitions and the structural analysis results of the existing door. Size optimization is carried out to find thickness while the stiffness constraints are satisfied. The door hinge system is optimized using design of experiment approach. A commercial optimization software MSC/NASTRAN is utilized for the structural analysis and the optimization processes.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.228-233
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• 2002

TWB(Tailor Welded Blanks) is one of the recent techniques to reduce the weight and cost of the body members. To apply the TWB technique, we must decide the position of the welding line and the thickness of the welded blanks. Although many researchers have tried to check the formability of welded blanks, there are not so many researches from the structural point of view. In this paper, the TWB technique is applied to combine the door inner panel and the hinge face panel into one piece. The finite element structural analysis of the door assembly leads to the final design of the tailor welded door inner panel, which shows the mass reduction of 1.08kg without the sacrifice of the structural stiffness. The structural stiffness analysis includes the frame stiffness analysis, the belt line stiffness analysis, the door sagging analysis and the vibration analysis.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.193-199
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• 2001

Forming more than two parts of sheet metal in a single stamping operation lowers production costs, reduces weight, and heightens dimensional accuracy. The tailored blank (TB) is a laser-welded or mash-seam-welded sheet metal with different thicknesses, different strengths, or different coatings. Recently, automotive manufacturers have been interested in tailored blanks because of their desire to improve the rigidity, weight reduction, crash durability, and cost savings. Therefore the application to auto-bodies has increased. However, as tailored blanks do not behave like un-welded blanks in press forming operations, stamping engineers no longer rely on conventional forming techniques. Field try-outs are very important manufacturing processes for an economic die-making. In the field try-outs, the rounded geometries of tool and the drawbead shape and size in die face are generally modified when the forming defects can not be removed by the adjustment of forming process parameters. In this study, the field try-outs of tailored door inner panel are introduced and evaluated. The behaviours of laser tailored blank associated with different thickness combinations in the forming process of door inner panel are described focusing on terms of experimental investigations on the formability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.132-137
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• 2004

In order to reduce automobile parts weight, TWB(Tailored welded blank) forming is widely used in the forming of car panel, such as door inner, side outer panels. In this study, one of the current problems of TWB forming was analyzed, especially for the try-out process of TWB door inner panel without frame. A comparison was made between actual panel measurements and results of forming analysis for formability and springback.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.85-96
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• 1996

Most protection systems such as seat belts and airbags are not effective means for side structure. There has been significant effort in the automobile industries in seeking other protective methods, such as stiffer structure and padding on the door inner panel. Therefore, a car-to-car side impact model has been developed using ATB occupant simulation program and validated for test data of the vehicle. Compared to the existing side impact models, the developed model has a more detailed vehicle side structure representation for the more realistic impact response of the door. This model include impact bar which effectively increases the side structure stiffness without reduction of space between the occupant and the door and padding for absorbing impact energy. The established model is applied to a 4-door vehicle. The parameter study indicated that a stiffer impact bar would reduce both the acceleration-based criteria, such as thoracic trauma index: TTI(d), and deformation-based criteria, such as viscous criterion(VC). Padding on the door inner panel would reduce TTI(d) while VC gives the opposite indication in a specified thickness range. For a 4-door vehicle, the stiffness enhancement of B-pillar is more beneficial than that of A-pillar for occupant injury severity indices.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.4 s.85
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• pp.289-294
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• 2006

To reduce automobile parts weight, TWB(tailored welded blank) forming is widely used in panel forming. But products used TWB forming process have many defect, wrinkle, crack and springback. So study of TWB forming process character is very important. In this study one of the current problems of TWB forming was analyzed, especially for the try-out process of inner door panel without frame. A comparison was made between actual measurements and prediction of forming analysis for formability and springback. Also a new analysis die model which have additional plane on die surface was proposed to correct result of forming analysis. This proposed method overcomes the difference for TWB forming result between try-out and analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.95-101
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• 1998

The steel door inner was manufactured via a new route, tailored blanking process, to remove hinge reinforcement parts, using thicker panels laser welded, instead. It is very important, first of all, in this process, to design optimum configuration of tailored blanks and determine the optimum process control for the stamping. Generally, it was found that the severe deformation reduction behavior during stamping in the thinner panel around weld line caused cracks and the other troubles in formability. It is our purpose of this investigation to introduce how the process control parameters, such as tailored blank configuration, size, location in the die, the position of weld line, BHF, bead configuration, work on the formability. In addition, causes of cracks and movement of weld line after forming were analyzed and compared with computer simulation work.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2000.04b
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• pp.187-194
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• 2000

Weight reduction for an automobile body is being sought for the fuel efficiency and the energy conservation. One way of the efforts is adopting Ultra Light Steel Auto Body (ULSAB) concept. The ULSAB concept can be used for the light weight of an automobile door with the tailor welded blank (TWB). A design process is defined for the TWB. The inner panel of door is designed by the TWB and optimization. The design starts from an existing component. At first, the hinge and inner reinforcements are removed. In the conceptual design stage, topology optimization is conducted to find the distribution of variable thicknesses. The number of parts and the welding lines are determined from the topology design. In the detailed design process, size optimization is carried out to find thickness while stiffness constraints are satisfied. The final parting lines are determined by shape optimization.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.570-575
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• 2008

Flows are studied to understand the flow structure in the narrow region that any experimental approaches are hard to access, Effects on the vehicle commodities from the flows are anticipated in the point of aerodynamics and aero-acoustics. PowerFLOW, which was well validated commercial software, was used to simulate the flow field in the small region, for example, the inner region of the fender panel, the inner region around the front door and the inner region of the trunk lid. Flows in the narrow region could be origins of door sealing problem and dust piling problem.