Abstract
TWB(Tailor Welded Blanks) is one of the recent techniques to reduce the weight and cost of the body members. To apply the TWB technique, we must decide the position of the welding line and the thickness of the welded blanks. Although many researchers have tried to check the formability of welded blanks, there are not so many researches from the structural point of view. In this paper, the TWB technique is applied to combine the door inner panel and the hinge face panel into one piece. The finite element structural analysis of the door assembly leads to the final design of the tailor welded door inner panel, which shows the mass reduction of 1.08kg without the sacrifice of the structural stiffness. The structural stiffness analysis includes the frame stiffness analysis, the belt line stiffness analysis, the door sagging analysis and the vibration analysis.
