Forming of Lightweight Metal Components: Need for New Technologies

Contributing to lightweight design in the field of metal forming, four different strategies are introduced – the material, component, functional, and conditional lightweight strategy. Their main objective is the reduction of a component's weight and the saving of our available resources. Regarding each approach, innovative forming technologies are presented and their contribution to lightweight success is depicted. On the one hand, this article covers conventional processes like e.g. extrusion, which are used for processing hybrid lightweight materials. On the other hand, new forming technologies are introduced to serve lightweight requirements like e.g. load adaption. Finally, the importance of numerical damage modeling regarding lightweight design is shown.