TAILOR WELDED BLANKS

Abstract

A Tailor Welded Blank (TWB) is a weld element where the welding is carried out between metals of two different elements.Tailor welded blanks (TWB's) offer an excellent opportunity to reduce manufacturing costs, decrease vehicle weight and to improve the quality of sheet metal stampings and structural elements.Tailor Welded Blanks (TWBs) offer a means to address all of the concerns by reducing manufacturing costs, decreasing vehicle weight, improving crashworthiness, improving dimensional accuracy of the final part and increasing the corrosion resistance.A TWB is fabricated 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.Aluminum TWBs offer additional weight savings and would address the concerns of increased cost and decreased crashworthiness, which normally accompany Aluminum for steel material substitutions.While Aluminum TWBs are currently being implemented for less structural components such as deck lids and hoods, door inners and floor pans are being investigated as possible Aluminum TWB applications for the future.Like tailoring a shirt to suit the need of a person, a TWB is a weld designed to suit the applications.The application varies from strength to light metal.The applications of TWB are variant from the basic automobiles to that of space craft and structural elements.