Do cars need welding in the future? (Figure)

China Coatings Online News Information:
light caused by thinking: do you want to weld cars? White body welding refers to the welding of various stamping parts into a qualified white body assembly. There are many common welding methods in modern cars, such as resistance spot welding, laser welding, Plasma welding, riveting welding, TIG/MIG welding, etc. According to statistics, the number of welding spots in the white body as high as 4000 to 6000, the stamping parts will be assembled together at the same time, but also increase the weight of the body. Under the trend of modern body lightweighting, the control means of welding process are endless. For example, the use of simulation analysis, welding point optimization analysis, in order to meet the strength of the body at the same time, reduce the number of welding points, the use of weight-gaining welding process instead of weight-gaining welding process, such as laser welding process, with continuous laser welds instead of discrete spot welds, can reduce the lifting width and some reinforcement components, compression of the body structure itself volume. However, the above is only an improvement on the existing welding process, the real disruptive change has not yet arrived.
recent years due to the fuel crisis and environmental pollution and other issues, body lightweighting has received more and more attention. In particular, new energy vehicles, unlike traditional vehicles, use batteries as power to drive the operation of the car, so by the battery weight, range constraints, in vehicle design and material applications, body lightweight is the primary consideration of car companies. For this reason, major automobile companies have launched coping strategies in the hope of finding new body materials to reduce vehicle weight, of which carbon fiber and aluminum alloy are the most discussed materials. First look at the following cases: On February 13, 2015, Ford Motor Company announced that it would cooperate with Dow Chemical in the United States to research and manufacture innovative carbon fiber composites for use in future products; A joint venture was established to produce automotive parts made of carbon fiber reinforced plastics in 2012, and General Motors and Japanese carbon fiber manufacturer Tidal announced on December 8, 2011 that they will jointly develop advanced carbon fiber/thermoplastic composite technology.
also owns aluminum-rolled products giant Novelis Inc. The company completed Asia's first automotive-specific aluminum sheet production line (Changzhou) at the end of 2014, building on the expansion of its north American and European operations. Although only 1 per cent of cars are now all-aluminum, 18 per cent of the world's cars will be all-aluminum by 2025, according to a report by Ducker, a US market research firm. So with the rise of new materials, will traditional welding processes be affected? The answer is yes, for example, aluminum alloy because of its easy oxidation, thermal conductivity and higher than thermal capacity, line expansion coefficient, alloy elements volatile and other shortcomings, the traditional welding process has a great challenge. In recent years, a new glue technology has appeared in some high-end models, which, unlike traditional auxiliary welding methods, is designed to reduce or completely replace the welding process by combining riveting and glue technology or using only glue technology. For example, Jaguar T-TYPE, the all-aluminum body structure is completely riveted and welded.
F-TYPE weighs only 261Kg, compared with about 300Kg in general and nearly 40Kg. Because aluminum alloy material is a metal material, in strength, plasticity, weight restrictions, the use of fully glued way is still relatively difficult to achieve, the current use of this means only Jaguar T-TYPE, Lutes Elise and other models. But as a "plastic" and more intense carbon fiber material, this is much less difficult. For example, bmw i-Series electric cars with carbon fiber body, body bonding is done by up to 160 meters of glue. In the decade from 2005 to 2014, BMW Group gradually increased the application of carbon fiber composites from the BMW M family models, and accumulated rich experience in research and development and production. The body of BMW i products is completely made of carbon fiber, with weaving, molding, bonding process to replace the traditional metal body stamping, welding process. If aluminum alloy technology is now, then carbon fiber technology is likely to be the future. Now carbon fiber technology has high cost, repairability and other problems.
is not an unsolvable problem. With the joint efforts of the major car companies, the cost problem has been improved to a certain degree. For example, the domestic model of the T300, equipped with carbon fiber single-hull body, the price is only 120,000 yuan. Or Dow Automotive Systems' innovation in carbon fiber bonding solutions - BETAFORCETM composite structural injection bonding technology. The technology helps customers improve their assembly efficiency by adjusting parameters such as opening hours and cycle times to customize the structural glue according to the customer's special production requirements without affecting mechanical performance. With injection bonding technology, carbon fiber components can be used more widely in the assembly of a wide range of materials, effectively supporting the lightweight strategy of automotive manufacturers. The technology has now been successfully applied to the BMW Group's latest BMW 7 Series (2016). Above, body lightweighting is a big trend, in this trend triggered by a variety of new materials, new technology research is emerging, the traditional white body welding process will be affected by the body lightweight trend, perhaps one day, even ordinary civilian vehicles will not use the white body welding process.
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