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The paper summarises work which has been carried out to establish the sensitivity of the Alcan AVT weld-bonding system to manufacturing process variability. The robustness of the joint-line to factors such as panel fit-up, bondline thickness, adhesive fillet size and missing adhesive is discussed and their effects demonstrated. Manufacturing factors, such as pretreatment damage during part forming and the cure-cycle window for the adhesive, are considered and their effects on performance are indicated. Finally the effect of a series of manufacturing shortfalls and environmental factors have been put together in one experiment and the resulting strength and fatigue performance of bonded joints has been established.

A proven design and manufacturing system for building automotive structural frames and unibody structures in adhesively bonded sheet aluminum is described. The system, which was developed to be compatible with established procedures and facilities for building spot-welded steel vehicles, allows the weight of such vehicle body structures to be reduced by almost half, yet provides structures of similar rigidity, excellent resistance to fatigue and corrosion attack and has been proven through evaluation tests carried out on replicas of production cars built using the technology. While developed for manufacturing automobile structures from adhesively bonded stamped sheet, adaptation of this technology to the construction of adhesively bonded perimeter and tubular structural frames is also described.