• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.603-609
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• 1998

An aluminium sandwich sheet is the material fabricated by adhering two aluminum panels to one plastic core. When it has the same bending stiffness as an steel panel it is 65% lighter than steel panel and 30% lighter than aluminum panel. Therefore it is notified exclusively as good substitutive materials for steel body to improve fuel efficiency. An aluminium sandwich sheet, however, has a problem of the lower formability than steel in automotive application. In this paper we intend to develop application technologies of an aluminum sandwich sheet for auto body panels from selecting composed materials of aluminium sandwich sheets to fabricating prototype. We selected aluminium sandwich panels fabricated by Hoogovens company. Through formability tests we have designed the hood part on auto body panels and fabricated a mould and a prototype.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.259-268
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• 2005

In order to analyze the sheet drawability, the measurement of the plastic strain ratio was carried out for the 5182 aluminum alloy sheets in which were cold rolled without lubrication and subsequent recrystallization annealing. The average plastic strain ratio of the 5182 aluminum sheets was 1.50. It was considered that the higher plastic strain ratio was resulted from the ND//<111> component evolved during rolling and maintained during annealing. The AA5182/polypropylene/AA5182 (AA/PP/AA) sandwich sheets of the 5182 aluminum alloy skin sheet and the polypropylene core sheet with high formability have been developed for application for automotive body panels in future light weight vehicles with significant weight reduction. The AA/PP/AA sandwich sheets were fabricated by the adhesion of the core sheet and the upper and lower skin sheets. The AA/PP/AA sandwich sheet had high plastic strain ratio (1.58), however, the planar anisotropy of the sandwich sheet was little changed after fabrication. The optimum combination of directionality of the upper and lower skin sheets having high plastic strain ratio and low planar anisotropy was calculated theoretically and an advanced process for producing the sandwich sheets with high plastic strain ratio was proposed. The developed sandwich sheets have a high average plastic strain ratio of 1.55 and a low planar anisotropy of 0.17, which was improved more by 3.2 times than that of 5182 aluminum single sheet.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.91-100
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• 2001

A sectional FEA program is developed lot analyzing forming processes of sandwich sheets, which are intensively used recently as a lightweight material of an automobile body. The aluminum sandwich sheet consists of two aluminum skins and a polyprophylen core in between. The aluminum sandwich sheet is dominantly effected by the bending effects in small radius of curvature, so that an appropriate description of bending effects is required to analyze the forming processes. For the evaluation of bending effects, the bending equivalent forces are calculated from the bending moment computed using the curvature of the tool and are added to the membrane stretch forces. To verify the validity of the developed program the sectional FEA results in stretch/draw forming Processes of a square cup and draw forming Processes of an outer hood panel were compared with the measurements.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.485-492
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• 2006

The AA5182/polypropylene/AA5182(AA/PP/AA) sandwich sheets have been developed for application to automotive body panels in future lightweight vehicles with significant weight reduction. It has been reported that the AA5182 aluminum sheet shows $L\"{u}ders$ band because of dissolved Mg atoms that cause fabrication process problem, especially surface roughness. The examination of serration behavior has been made after the tensile deformation of the AA/PP/AA sandwich sheets as well as that of the AA5182 aluminum skins at room and elevated temperatures. All sandwich sheets and the AA5182 aluminum skin showed serration behavior on their flow curves. However, the magnitude of serration was significantly diminished in the sandwich sheet with high volume fraction of the polypropylene core. According to the results of the analysis of the surface roughness following the tensile test, $L\"{u}ders$ band depth of the sandwich sheet evidently showed lower than that of the AA5182 aluminum skin. The strain rate sensitivity, m-value, of the AA5182 aluminum skin was -0.006. By attaching these skins to the polypropylene core, which has relatively large positive value of 0.050, m-value of the sandwich sheets changed to the positive value. The serration mechanism of the sandwich sheets was quantitatively investigated in the point of the effect on polypropylene thickness variation, that on the strain rate sensitivity and that on the localized stress state.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.657-663
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• 2005

Recently, weight reduction of vehicles has been of great interest, and consequently the use of composite materials in the automotive industry is increasing every year. Composite sandwich panels which consist of two skins and core materials are replacing steels in automotive floor and door. The substitution of one material for another is accompanied by change of joining method, so that adhesive bonding has been popularly used for joining method of composite materials. In the case of adhesive bonding of composite materials, there could be loss in the joint strength by delamination of two faceplates or cracking on faceplate. Thus, it is necessary to prevent loss in the joint strength by designing the joint geometry. In the present paper, adhesive bonding of aluminum sandwich sheet was tried. For understanding joint behavior, studies on stresses in the single lap joint were reviewed and failure modes of composite material were analyzed. Strength tests on the single lap joint consisting of aluminum sandwich sheet and steel were performed and variation of the joint strength with the joint configuration was shown. Based on these results, design guide of adhesive bonding in aluminum sandwich sheet was suggested.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.192-203
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• 2004

The AA5182/polypropylene/AA5182 (AA/PP/AA) sandwich sheets have been developed for the application for automotive body panels in the future light weight vehicles with significant weight reduction. It has been reported that the 5182 aluminum sheet shows Luders band because of dissolved Mg atoms that causes fabrication process problem, especially surface roughness. The examination of serration behavior has been made after the tensile deformation of the AA/PP/AA sandwich sheets as well as that of the 5182 aluminum skin at room and elevated temperatures. All sandwich sheets and the 5182 aluminum skin showed serration phenomena on their flow curves. However, the magnitude of the serration was significantly diminished in the sandwich sheet with the high volume fraction of the polypropylene core. According to the results of the surface roughness analysis after the tensile test, the sandwich sheet evidently showed lower Luders band depth than the 5182 aluminum skin. Strain rate sensitivity, m-value, of the 5182 aluminum skin was -0.006. By attaching this skin with polypropylene core which has relatively large positive value, 0.050, m-value of the sandwich sheets was changed to the positive value. The serration reduction of the sandwich sheets was quantitatively investigated in the point of the effect on the polypropylene core thickness variation, that on the strain rate sensitivity. It was found that the serration reduction degree from the experimental results of the sandwich sheet was higher than that from the calculated values by the rule of mixture based on volume fraction of the skins and the core.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2007

The objective of this study was to develop formability evaluation techniques in order to apply aluminum sandwich panel for automotive body parts. For this purpose, newly adopting formability evaluation (using limit dome height and plane strain test) was carried out in order to secure the fundamental data for the measurement of sheet metal forming and the establishment of optimum forming conditions of the aluminum sandwich panel. The results showed that there were good agreements between the old formability evaluation method and the new method which was more simplified than that of old one. From the results of these formability evaluation, the formability of sandwich panel was higher than that of aluminum alloy sheet alone which was the skin component for the sandwich panel. Also, it was found that sandwich panel could reduce the weight and could have the same flexural rigidity simultaneously when it was compared to the automotive steel sheet.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.131-139
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• 1998

An aluminium sandwich sheet is the material fabricated by adhering two aluminum panels to one plastic core. If it has the same bending stiffness as an steel panel, it is 65% lighter than steel panel and 30% lighter than aluminum panel. Therefore it is marked exclusively as god substitutive materials of steel body for improving fuel efficiency. But an aluminium sandwich sheet has problem of the lower formability than steel for automotive application. In this paper we intend to develop application technologies of an aluminum sandwich sheet for auto body panels from the selecting composed materials of aluminium sandwich sheets to fabricating prototype. We selected aluminium sandwich panels fabricated by Hoogovens company. Through formability tests we have finished the design and fabricated a mould and a prototype.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.1145-1156
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• 2016

To study the effects of foam core density and face-sheet thickness on the mechanical properties and failure modes of aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) beam, especially when the aluminum foam core is made in aluminum alloy and the face sheet thickness is less than 1.5 mm, three-point bending tests were investigated experimentally by using WDW-50E electronic universal tensile testing machine. Load-displacement curves were recorded to understand the mechanical response and photographs were taken to capture the deformation process of the composite structures. Results demonstrated that when foam core was combined with face-sheet thickness of 0.8 mm, its carrying capacity improved with the increase of core density. But when the thickness of face-sheet increased from 0.8 mm to 1.2 mm, result was opposite. For AFS with the same core density, their carrying capacity increased with the face-sheet thickness, but failure modes of thin face-sheet AFS were completely different from the thick face-sheet AFS. There were three failure modes in the present research: yield damage of both core and bottom face-sheet (Failure mode I), yield damage of foam core (Failure mode II), debonding between the adhesive interface (Failure mode III).

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.229-241
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• 2021

This work focused on aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) with different foam core densities and different face-sheet thicknesses subjected to constant amplitude three-point bending cyclic loading to study its fatigue performance. The experiments were conducted out by a high frequency fatigue test machine named GPS-100. The experimental results showed that the fatigue life of AFS decreased with the increasing loading level and the structure was sensitive to cyclic loading, especially when the loading level was under 20%. S-N curves of nine groups of AFS specimens were obtained and the fatigue life of AFS followed three-parameter lognormal distribution well. AFS under low cyclic loading showed pronounced cyclic hardening and the static strength after fatigue test increased. For the same loading level, effects of foam core density and face-sheet thickness on the fatigue life of AFS structure were trade-off and for the same loading value, the fatigue life of AFS increased with aluminum foam core density or face-sheet thickness monotonously. Core shear was the main failure mode in the present study.