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Design for assembly (DFA) is a prominent strategy for manufacturing cost reduction in automotive industries. DFA in automotive component design is a complicated process since several competing targets have to be considered simultaneously in designing various functions and features. It requires specialized design knowledge as well as extensive quantitative analysis, comparison and evaluation. Analytical Hierarchic Process (AHP) is one of the tools that can assist such design and evaluation processes. It has been successfully applied in various processes when multiple competing goals and characteristics are involved. In this paper, we propose the application of AHP for DFA in automotive component design and present a case study involving car front end component design.

Fuel economy and federal safety regulations are driving automotive companies to use Dual Phase and other Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) in vehicle body structures. Joining and assembly plays a crucial role in the selection of these steels. Specifications are available for the resistance spot welding (RSW) of lower strength sheet steels, covering many aspects of the welding process from the stabilization procedure to endurance testing. Currently, specifications in the automotive industry for RSW with AHSS are limited. It is well known that welding of a thickness ratio greater than 1:2 poses a challenge. To utilize thinner gauge AHSS panels on body-in-white, welding schedules to join the thin to thick sheet steel stack-up are needed. Most of the existing published work was conducted on uncoated sheets and welded to the same thickness.

To reach safety, emissions, and cost objectives, manufacturers of automotive body structural and chassis components shape thin gauge, high strength steel tube with a bending, pre-forming and hydroforming process. Challenging grades and bend severity require a careful optimization of the bending procedure. A joint project between Ford and ArcelorMittal Tubular Products investigated suitable bending parameters for severe bends using commercially available thin-walled DP780 and HSLA350 tubes. This paper summarizes the measurement methods found to be capable of capturing small differences in bending formability and details the influence of bender variables such as boost, pressure die, center-line bend radius and bend angle on the wrinkling, thinning and springback of these tubes. As a result of this work, recommendations were made as to effective bender set-ups for these tubes.