Tailor welded blanks (TWBs) are created by welding together two or more sheets of metal of different thicknesses, material grades, and/or coatings, to produce a single blank, which is subsequently formed. As with the design stage of all sheet metal parts, numerical simulations of TWB components play a critical role in decreasing time to market of the product and determining the appropriate process parameters and tooling geometry to obtain the desired final part shape. In this paper, numerical simulations are compared with experimental results for a non-symmetric TWB test panel using a traditional deep drawing process. In addition, numerical simulations and experiments are examined for an advanced forming process developed by Cao and Kinsey (1) where a segmented die with local adaptive controllers clamps adjacent to the weld line during the forming process. This process modification increases the material draw-in of the thicker and/or stronger material from under the binder ring thus reducing the strain in the weaker and/or thinner material near the weld seam and alleviating the potential of tearing failure. Excellent agreement between experimental results and numerical simulations was obtained for both cases.
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