Development of hybrid directionally reinforced structural parts for lightweight applications

Hybrid materials often provide significantly improved characteristics when compared with traditional materials. Common examples include demands for a light weight and for anisotropic strength. This paper covers the design and manufacture of structural parts made from titanium reinforced aluminium sheets. The first step is a metal cladding for producing hybrid sheet materials as semi-finished products for a variety of sheet metal parts. These require suitably adjusted metalworking processes to achieve the desired reshaping. Here, FEM techniques facilitate both product design and the forming operations involved.