From flange to I-joint

New concepts in the design and construction of structural elements of the car body save weight, time, costs and installation space.

How much material, weight and fuel can be saved if the flange and lap joints on beams, sills, tunnels and other welded open channel constructions of a car body are replaced with I-joints?
When the weight of the glue that joins the door panels to the frame is included in the overall equation, this question is worth asking. Depending on the components, no longer using flange
connections can lead to weight savings in the kilogram range and reduce the necessary installation space per part by the width of the previous "collar" – often up to 8 to 16mm.

The flange design is the long-grown-up child of two inventions that have characterised modern car body construction. The first is resistance spot welding developed in 1877 as a fast, efficient
and useful joining method for manufacturing; and the second is robotics, which began to be used in industrial applications in 1954. When combined, welding made an enormous leap in the level of automation and productivity possible. However, there was a price to be paid in design requirements: two pieces of sheet metal placed on top of one another that the robot can clamp with its electrode holders. This method and the speed in which it can move from weld point to weld point ranks among the most formative moments in car body construction.

Strategy change during design
Over the long term, future savings and productivity gains will be more a result of a strategy change in the design rather than an optimisation of the existing methods. In other words, designs that use single-sided, highly automatable welding methods like laser remote welding will produce savings and productivity benefits. Such designs pave the way for profile and tube designs for structural elements and for components joined with integrated clamping devices.

Three years ago, Daimler and a few other companies demonstrated what the turnabout from resistance spot welding to laser beam welding can mean when they began using the "robot scan" laser welding process. In May 2010 at the International Laser Technology Congress (AKL) in Aachen, Germany, the benefits of the method were once again demonstrated. The processing speed rose from 50 % up to 80 %. At the same time, Daimler took advantage of the ability to freely shape the seam geometry and replaced the weld spots with brackets and S seams. These substantially stiffer connections allow a reduction in the thickness of the sheet metal, which in turn means a reduction in weight and material costs as well as welding time and energy.

The true charm of laser welding becomes apparent with the design freedom it offers. Because it does not require overlapping, flanges or double-sided access, laser welding can be used for all the modern sheet, tube and profile processing in car body construction. The universal process chain with tube processing machines that cut and bend tubes and profiles with the necessary precision is already available.

Here's a simple example: If one component contains two profiles joined at a specific angle, this component can be made completely from one profile. The cutting laser in the tube processing machine places a V-shaped nick on the pre-defined spot for this purpose. The next station in the production line "bends" the profile into a "hinge" creating an angular piece. Lastly, the laser welds both shanks with a touch-up-free seam on the joint.

Jumping from sofa to car
Perhaps the jump from sofa to car might appear daring. Yet in many places the automobile industry is already working with profiles or designs that can be replaced by profiles for structural elements. And in the case of future electric cars, weight-reducing profile designs will play an even greater role than they do in today's gasoline-powered vehicles.

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