Specifics of formability in recent developments of tailor-welded blanks

Bajaj, D, Siddiquee, AN, Chen, DL, Konovalov, S, Chen, X, Haider, J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7010-8285 and Serier, M (2023) Specifics of formability in recent developments of tailor-welded blanks. National Academy Science Letters. ISSN 0250-541X

Accepted Version File will be available on: 19 May 2024. Download (668kB)

Abstract

This article serves as a compendium to the design engineers proceeding to manufacture geometrically complex functional components having an array of mechanical properties owing to a variety of metallic materials that are welded together. Such dynamic attempts require the knowhow of forming behavior of welded sheet metals, which are carefully explicated based on recent advances. The thickness and/or strength dissimilarity across the welded microstructures give birth to distortion and warpage in the welded sheets. The warpage during the forming operation renders the workpiece useless. The modern approaches to tackling the warpage phenomena like weld line movement and springback are highlighted with emphasis on unification of finite element, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and analytical methods. This is necessary for the free form forming operations on welded sheets to provide creative edge and flexibility in design.