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The purpose of this study is to improve the mechanical properties and formability of friction stir welded tailor-welded blanks (TWBs) of Al6061 alloy with a new forming method called hot forming quenching (HFQ) in which solid-solution heat-treated aluminum sheets are formed at elevated temperature. Forming and quenching during HFQ are simultaneously performed with the forming die for the solid-solution heat-treated sheet. In this study, specimens of aluminum TWBs were prepared by friction stir welding (FSW) with a butt joint. The effectiveness of FSW joining was evaluated by observation of the macrostructure for different sheet thicknesses. In order to evaluate the formability of TWBs by HFQ, a hemisphere dome stretching test of the limit dome height achieved without specimen failure was performed with various tool temperatures. A Vickers test was also performed to measure weldment hardness as a function of position. The formability and mechanical properties of products formed by HFQ are compared with those formed by conventional forming methods, demonstrating the suitability of HFQ for sheet metal forming of friction stir welded TWBs.

The hot curvature forming of large aluminum plates is a process used to produce spherical liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanks. In this study, we describe a method to determine the optimum shape of blanks to minimize the root gap in the forming process. The method proposed in this study was applied to a small-scale model for thick plates with a curvature of 1500 mm and thickness of 6 mm. First, the shape of the curved shells was determined as the target shape, and then a coordinate transform was used to determine the optimum blank shape, which was then iteratively modified using the results of finite element method (FEM) simulations, including heat transfer, until the shape error was minimized. Experiments in forming using Al5083 thick plate were carried out, showing that the method can determine the optimum blank shape within an allowable root gap of 0.1 mm.