A Study on Infrared Local Heat Treatment for AA5083 to Improve Formability and Automotive Part Forming

Automotive industries are increasingly employing aluminum alloys for auto parts to reduce vehicle weight. However, the low formability of aluminum alloys has been an obstacle to their application. To resolve the formability problem, some studies involving heat treatments under laboratory conditions...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of materials engineering and performance Vol. 26; no. 10; pp. 5056 - 5063
Main Authors Lee, Eun-Ho, Yang, Dong-Yol, Ko, SeJin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.10.2017
Subjects
Characterization and Evaluation of Materials
Chemistry and Materials Science
Corrosion and Coatings
Engineering Design
Materials Science
Quality Control
Reliability
Safety and Risk
Tribology
tailgate
formability
infrared ray local heating
aluminum alloy
stress-based forming limit diagram
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Summary:Automotive industries are increasingly employing aluminum alloys for auto parts to reduce vehicle weight. However, the low formability of aluminum alloys has been an obstacle to their application. To resolve the formability problem, some studies involving heat treatments under laboratory conditions have been reported. However, for industrial applications, the heat treatment sequence, heating energy efficiency, and a commercial part test should be studied. This work shows an infrared (IR) local heat treatment, heating only small areas where the heat treatment is required, for an aluminum alloy to improve the formability with a reduction of heating energy. The experiment shows that the formability drastically increases when the aluminum alloy is heat treated between two forming stages, referred to as intermediate heat treatment. The microstructures of the test pieces are evaluated to identify the cause of the increase in the formability. For an industrial application, an aluminum tailgate, which cannot be manufactured without heat treatment, was successfully manufactured by the IR local heat treatment with a reduction of energy. A simulation was also conducted with a stress-based forming limit diagram, which is not affected by the strain path and heat treatment histories. The simulation gives a good prediction of the formability improvement.
ISSN:1059-9495
1544-1024
DOI:10.1007/s11665-017-2945-7