• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.519-527
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• 2005

Recently, weight reduction of vehicles has been of great interest and consequently the use of low-density materials in the automotive industry is increasing every year. However, the substitution of one material for another is not simple because it accompanies several problems, for example, weakness in the strength and stiffness and difficulty in the joining. To overcome these problems, the structure of the automobile redesigned totoally. Aluminum spaceframe is rapidly being adopted as a body structure for accommodating lightness, stiffness and strength requirement. In aluminum spaceframe manufacturing, it is often required to join aluminum tube. However, there are few suitable methods for joining aluminum tube, so that much interest has been focused on testing suitable joining methods. Joining by electromagnetic forming (EMF) can be useful method in joining aluminum tube, which offers some advantages compared with the conventional joining methods. In this paper, joining by EMF was investigated as a pre-study for applying an automotive spaceframe. Finite element simulations and strength tests were performed to analyze the influence of geometric parameters on joint strength. Based on these results, configurations of axial joint and torque joint were suggested and guidelines for designing EMF joint were established.