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2012
Conference Paper
Titel
A demonstrator for magnesium-based lightweight design in automotive doors
Alternative
Eine Magnesiumautomobiltür als Leichtbaudemonstrator
Abstract
Magnesium shows an increasing use for lightweight design in general and in particular for structural parts in automotive industry. So far mostly casted magnesium is used for crankcases or casting nodes as stiff joints in frameworks. The weight of such parts can be reduced with Magnesium by 25 to 60%. Thin magnesium sheets are hardly used so far. Generally it can be pronounced that magnesium has still a huge potential-despite of various problems in process and properties of the product. With a public funded project called TeMaK a technology platform for the use of wrought magnesium alloys for vehicle construction has been set up to analyse the usability over the whole life cycle of a car. Almost 30 different companies and research institutes investigated under the leadership of Fraunhofer IWU the whole process chain for manufacturing a magnesium-car-door-starting from the manufacturing of the final sheet metal, which is realized by cast rolling ad including the assembling of the parts. The focus was set on application-oriented joining welding as well as mechanical joining methods. Beside conventional technologies new and improved processes were investigated too. The reached weight savings of the whole door are approx. 60%.