ALUMINIUM BODY PANELS FOR CAR BODIES

1. In recent years, environmental improvement and safety have
become veryimportant for the automobile industry.
Environmental improvement andsafety features lead to increases
in car body weight. To reduce weight, there-fore, it is necessary
to select optimum materials such as aluminum alloys.Figure 2.1
shows the plan to reduce CO emissions in Europe.
Europeanautomobile manufacturers have to achieve an average
CO2 emission targetof 140 g/km for their fleet of new cars to be
sold in 2008.
Japanese auto-mobile manufacturers have to achieve the same
target by 2009. In NorthAmerica and Japan,
automobile manufacturers also have to achieve fuelconsumption
regulation targets. For these reasons, aluminum alloys
areessential to reduce the weight of car bodies
A l u m i n u m A l l o y s f o r B o d y P a n e l s

2. Automobile body panels consist of a double structure with an
outer paneland an inner panel. For the outer panels, higher
strength materials areespecially required to provide sufficient
denting resistance. For the innerpanels, higher deep drawing
capacity materials are especially required toallow the
manufacture of more complex shapes. In other words,
differentproperties are required for the outer and inner panels,
.Research and development of aluminum body panels began in
the 1970s

5. Study of the bake-hardening properties of 6xxx alloys after pre-
aging

8. Relationship between finite element analysis and practical
press forming