Tailor welded blanks were widely used in the automobile industry for their special advantages. A combination of
different materials, thickness, and coatings could be welded together to form a blank for stamping car body panels. With
the gradually growing consciousness on safety requirement of auto body structural, the business of laser tailor welded
blanks is developing rapidly in China. Laser tailor welded blanks were just the semi products between steel factory and
automobile manufacturers. As to the laser welding defects such as convexity and concavity, automobile industry had the
strict requirement. In this paper, quality standard on laser tailor welded blanks were discussed. As for the production of
laser tailor welded blanks, online quality control of laser tailor welded blanks was introduced. The image processing
system for welding laser positioning and weld seam monitoring were used in the production of laser tailor welded blanks.
The system analyzes images from the individual cameras and transmits the results to the machine control system via a
CAN bus.
Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) are gaining considerable market shares in the automotive industry. The
development and application of Dual Phase (DP) steel is just a consistent step towards high-strength steel grades with
improved mechanical behavior. Tailor welded blanks with DP steel are promoted in the application of Body-In-White
(BIW) structure by the automotive industry. A tailor welded blank consists of several flat sheets that are laser welded
together before stamping. Applied cases of tailor welded blanks of high strength steels on the automotive structural parts
are investigated in this paper. The mechanical behavior of laser welded joints for DP steel is studied. Microstructure of
laser welded joints for DP steel was observed by SEM. Martensite in the weld seam explains the higher strength of
welded joints than the base metal. Results show that the strain safety tolerance of laser welded seam for high strength
steel can meet the requirement of automobile parts for stamping if the location of laser welded seam is designed
reasonably.
Tailor welded blanks had been widely used in the automobile industry. A tailor welded blank consists of several flat sheets that were laser welded together before stamping. A combination of different materials, thickness, and coatings could be welded together to form a blank for stamping car body panels. As for the material for automobile industry, this technology was one of the development trend for automobile industry because of its weight reduction, safety improvement and economical use of materials. In this paper, the characters and production of tailor welded blanks in the market were discussed in detail. There had two major methods to produce tailor welded blanks. Laser welding would replace mesh seam welding for the production of tailor welded blanks in the future. The requirements on the edge preparation of unwelded blanks for tailor welded blanks were higher than the other steel processing technology. In order to produce the laser welded blank, there had the other process before the laser welding in the factory. In the world, there had three kinds of patterns for the large volume production of tailor welded blanks. In China, steel factory played the important role in the promotion of the application of tailor welded blanks. The competition for the supply of tailor welded blanks to the automobile industry would become fierce in the near future. As a result, the demand for the quality control on the production of tailor welded blanks would be the first priority concern for the factory.
Evaluation of the cut quality is extremely significant to industrial applications of laser cutting. The relationship between cut quality and processing conditions has been investigated by using one of the measurable cut qualities, such as kerf width, striations, dross, roughness and so on. However, each of these qualities can only partially represent the cut quality. In this paper, a synthetic evaluation method for laser cutting quality has been proposed. A 3KW CO2laser was used to perform cutting experiments with 1.0mm thick mild steel sheets. The cut quality indicators, including kerf width, striations, dross, roughness, under different cutting conditions have been studied. A Synthetic Quality Number (SQN) has been presented as the evaluation indicator by quantitatively analyzing the conventional indicators. A neural network based method to anticipate laser cutting quality has been presented with SQN as the evaluation indicator.
Laser cutting had been widely used in the material processing field with the increase of the requirements on the quality and work efficiency. As to the laser cutting, there had many factors that could affect the quality of cuts. Among them, the chemical composition played an important role because laser processing was a kind of interaction among laser beam, shielding gas and materials. Compared with the other element, silicon element had a deleterious effect on the laser processing which resulted in cuts with a dross and brittleness in the welded seam. However, many kinds of steel with high amount of silicon need to be processed by laser technology in recent years. In this paper, the influence of silicon element on the quality of laser cutting and laser welding was discussed. Continuous CO2 laser was used to cut and weld materials with different amount of silicon. Results showed that with the increase amount of silicon, the speed of laser cutting and laser welding decreased in order to obtain the good cuts and welds. Silicon had the obvious influence on the laser processing technology and quality. Microstructure of the laser welds for materials with high amount of silicon was also analyzed in this paper.
Tailor welded blanks were used in the automotive industry to consolidate parts, reduce weight, and increase safety. In recent years, this technology was developing rapidly in China. In Chinese car models, tailor welded blanks had been applied in a lot of automobile parts such as rail, door inner, bumper, floor panel, etc. Concerns on the properties of tailor welded blanks had become more and more important for automobile industry. A lot of research had shown that the strength of the welded seam was higher than that of the base metal, such that the weld failure in the aspect of strength was not a critical issue. However, formability of tailor welded blanks in the stamping process was complex. Among them, the metal flow of tailor welded blanks in the stamping process must be investigated thoroughly in order to reduce the scrap rate during the stamping process in automobile factories. In this paper, the behavior of metal flow for tailor welded blanks made by the laser welding process with two types of different thickness combinations were studied in the deep drawing process. Simulations and experiment verification of the movement of weld line for tailor welded blanks were discussed in detail. Results showed that the control on the movement of welded seam during stamping process by taking some measures in the aspect of blank holder was effective.
The application oftailor welded blanks in the automobile industry has brought many challenges. The properties of tailor welded blanks by laser with the combinations of different steel types and thicknesses were analyzed in this paper. Results showed that the formability ofwelded blanks dropped compared to that ofthe base metal.
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