Laser weldability of high-strength steel sheets in fabrication of tailor welded blanks

Abstract Tailor welded blanks (TWBs) – pressing blanks arranged to combine, by welding, multiple steel sheets of different thicknesses and properties, and which may or may not have been surface-treated – are now extensively used in the automotive industry for fabrication of car body panels. TWBs were initially used at mass production level in Germany in the early 1980s and have since seen rapidly increasing engineering applications worldwide.1, 2 TWBs were originally viewed as a way of boosting material yields through reuse of pressed-off edge material as well as of cutting manufacturing costs by reducing the number of component spot welds, number of welding operations, and number of pressing dies through integral forming of multiple pressings after pre-welding of blanks from conventional spot welding production.