Development of Door Outer Panel using High Strength Steel Sheet for Improving Dent Resistance

Dent resistance is an important characteristic to avoid damage on automotive outer panels. From a practical point of view, dents can be caused in a number of ways. Considering doors as an example, denting can occur from stone impacts or from the careless opening of an adjacently parked vehicle door. Denting can occur where the door surface is smooth and may not have sufficient curvature to resist dent. These exterior body parts are designed to improve dent resistance using a combination of work hardening and bake hardening. In brief, dent is affected by the shape of the parts and the material properties such as yield strength, strain and thickness. In this work, forming of door outer panel is investigated by Taguchi method. Main parameters are yield strength, thickness, blank size, blank holding force and so on. For the given value of design parameters, forming analysis of the eighteen cases are carried out according to L18 orthogonal array. After comparing the performance by simple conversion of simulation results into dent resistance, the final suggestion of the forming parameters is verified for the optimal improvement of dent resistance.