Patchwork Blanks - eine neue Halbzeugphilosophie

In the patchwork technology blanks are reinforced locally in highly stressed areas by bonded or welded sheets (patches) and then formed together as composite. To achieve sucessfull forming processes of the reinforced blanks, new methods for the numerical simulation and the design of the patches and joining zones were developed by the Fraunhofer Institutes IWU and IWS. Some results of our research, especially the identification of specific values of the adhesive layer and the laser weld seam, necessary for the FE-simulation, and the idea of edge relaxation are presented in this essay.