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TRR 10:  Integration of Forming, Cutting and Joining for the Flexible Manufacture of Lightweight Frame Structures

Subject Area Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering
Term from 2003 to 2014
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5485733
 
The developments in the automobile industry are, among other things, influenced by legal factors and changing customer needs. On the one hand, legislation demands a decrease of carbon dioxide emissions, on the other hand, increased crash requirements have to be fulfilled. The customer, in turn, expects enhanced safety and improved comfort as to equipment.
There is so far, independent of the material, no economically reasonable process chain for the production of lightweight frame structures in small numbers. The shaping tools of the conventional process chain do not, on the one hand, amortise. On the other hand, the one-time effort to achieve the desired production quality is still to extensive, making a manual production often inevitable and thus causing high costs.
Developing the scientific basics and methods for the creation of integrated process chains in terms of automatised and product-flexible limited-lot production of lightweight structures is the main focus of the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre. This is supposed to lead to a reduction of the production costs by means of a rationalisation and a simultaneous increase of flexibility, continuously integrating simulation and involving the construction process.
Within the Research Centre, an exemplary method of connecting the forming, cutting and joining processes by an idealised process chain for the flexible production of lightweight structures is presented. This process chain is exemplarily implemented by the use of selected processes holding a promising future potential. Extrusion of rounded profiles is in terms of forming a decisive aspect of this process. As to cutting, the flying profile separation immediately following the extrusion process, the manufacture of bores, and the bar end preparation for the joint setup are considered. Joining profiles to an entire structure exemplarily takes place by laser welding as well as by joining by forming using working media and working energies.
In order to integrate the process chain, investigations regarding the chaining of the different sub-processes by quantity- , variant- and configuration-flexible bite-, handling- and processing techniques as well as the provision of a closed simulation chain ranging from the forming to the joining process are required. To point out the problems and to illustrate the results, the BMW C1-spaceframe has been chosen as demonstrator.
DFG Programme CRC/Transregios

Completed projects

Applicant Institution Technische Universität Dortmund
 
 

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