PVLT: Forming
The most crucial aspect of reducing a vehicle’s weight lies in the materials used in the main body-in-white structure. But new lighter materials need to have the same forming qualities as older ones.
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"We are working to understand the manufacturing capability of new lightweight alloys which are being considered for future vehicle applications.”Geraint Williams, Forming Project Manager |
The Forming team at WMG is testing new alloys to assess their mechanical, metallurgical and formability properties in order to determine their suitability for use within the vehicle structure. The aesthetics and the costs of these new materials are also factors that are being taken into consideration. We have adopted a common suite of testing to fully characterise any given alloy including:
- Tensile Testing
- Forming Limit Curve generation
- Hole Expansion testing to assess edge cracking
- U-Profile analysis to assess springback
This can also be supplemented with further testing to give a compete picture of a material's behaviour with tests covering metallography (optical and electron) and Cross Die tooling to assess complex forming. More details of some of the key tests developed at WMG are shown below.
Learn more about our current Forming techniques:
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Forming Limit Curve |
Hole Expansion |
Cross Die |
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Springback |
Metallography |
