Macro-performance evaluation of friction stir welded automotive tailor-welded blank sheets: Part II – Formability

Formability of automotive friction stir welded TWB (tailor-welded blank) sheets was experimentally and numerically investigated in this work for four automotive sheets, aluminum alloy 6111-T4, 5083-H18, 5083-O and DP590 steel sheets, each having one or two different thicknesses. In particular, formability in three applications including the simple tension test with various weld line directions, hemisphere dome stretching and cylindrical cup drawing tests was evaluated. For numerical simulations, mechanical properties previously characterized in a joint paper (Chung et al., 2010) were utilized. To represent the mechanical properties, the non-quadratic orthogonal anisotropic yield function, Yld2000-2d, was utilized along with the (full) isotropic hardening law, while the anisotropy of the weld zone was ignored for simplicity.