Study on Weld Seam Control and Thickness Distributing of Tailor-Welded Blanks Drawing

Abstract

Deep drawing of square boxes of tailor-welded blanks (TWBs) was studied by experiment and simulation in this paper. When the tailor-welded square boxes with different thickness was drawn to square boxes, the weld seam moved towards the thick part on the bottom and towards the thin part on the wall of square boxes. If the blank-holder force was very small, the wrinkling will happen on the thin part. If the blank-holder was very large, fracture will occur on thin part. Draw beads and non-uniform blank-holder force were investigated to control the deformation of the TWBs workpieces in this paper. When using the draw beads during TWBs drawing, using draw beads in both sides was better measures to control the movement of the weld seam. When non-uniform blank-holder force was used to control the movement of weld seam of tailor-welded blanks, it should be choice that the non-uniform blank-holder force on thick part was a half of that on thin part. It was shown that draw beads give better effects on the control of TWBs drawing than other methods. The variation of thickness was little in the bottom, and the variation of thickness was obviously in the corner of bottom. The maximal variation of thickness of TWBs workpieces on different area was both about 90.1%.