The range of our business unit car body and cell structures is applying particularly on the automotive manufacturers and their suppliers. Risen safety and comfort demands brought more weight into the vehicle. Stronger motors led to rising fuel consumptions. Lightweight construction is the key technology to counteract on this development to ensure furthermore the production of safe comfortable and high performance cars with the protection of resources and environment at the same time.

As special focus needs to be on the production process of vehicles. We offer

• higher process stability for decrease of rejections,
• an improved material usage for reduction of trimming and waste as well as
• a general shortening of process chains to reduce the material input and energy consumption.

The current development in electromobility exacerbates this situation. The future vision is the broad integration of electric drives in vehicles. Challenges are the reduction in production costs of electro vehicles as well as the compensation of electric storage which is caused by excess weight. Therefore, developments of convertible, flexible and scaleable technologies and production systems are required. Strategies of ultra-lightweight construction as well as of friction minimization support the improvement in efficiency of electric cars.

The requirements towards the future car ask for lightweight construction concepts, in which materials, design and manufacturing process harmonise optimal. The usage of lightweight materials is only reasonable when their mechanical characteristics as stability, stiffness and temperature resistance are better than classic steel. Same goes for the costs. Therefore Fraunhofer IWU researches on forming and joining technologies for the optimum usage of high-strength steels, aluminum, magnesium and fiber composite materials.

The material future of large series will be composite construction. The right material needs to be used at the right place. Besides chemical and physical characteristics like costs and weight available production facilities, quality and recyclability play a major role.

Semi-finished products like structured sheet metal, so called Tailored Blanks, or metal foams offer lightweight potential possibilities. Foamed metals got besides a good mass-stiffness-relation an excellent strike absorbing capacity. Resulting out of that, there are application possibilities for the vehicle production in all stiffness and crash relevant areas.