Tailor Welded Blanks offer several notable benefits including decreased part weight, reduced manufacturing costs, and improved dimensional consistency. However the reduced formability and other characteristics of the forming process associated with TWBs has limited the industrial utilization of this blank type. One concern with TWB forming is that weld line movement occurs which alters the final location of the various materials in the TWB combination. In this paper, an analytical model to predict the initial weld line placement necessary to satisfy the desired, final weld line location is presented. Good agreement between the model, experimental results, and numerical simulations with respect to weld line movement and initial placement was obtained for a symmetric, steel TWB case and a non-symmetric, Aluminum TWB case.
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