Magnetic Pulse Welding Process To Decrease Vehicle Weight and Increase Fuel Efficiency

Looking forward in 1995, automobile manufacturers identified a potential shift in customer preferences to lighter weight, fuel-efficient automobiles; fuel-cell powered cars; and hybrid gas/electric vehicles. To make existing cars more fuel efficient and to meet the coming needs of alternatively powered vehicles, automobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) needed lighter components. These same OEMs, however, recognized that the 1995 generation of automobile components was manufactured as light as they could be using the existing technology. Therefore, improved efficiency could only be gained by using new, lighter weight materials, such as aluminum, and new manufacturing processes that reduced the use (and therefore the weight) of steel in welding. The Advanced Technology Program's (ATP) Focused Program, Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Technology, provided Dana Corporation with the necessary funding to develop technology to bond aluminum to steel without depositing additional metal at the weld site. Dana Corporation developed a functional magnetic pulse welding machine prototype to manufacture automobile parts that are twothirds lighter. Once installed into vehicles, these lighter parts would result in increased fuel efficiency of 8 to 10 percent. Since the project ended in 1998, automakers have contacted Dana Corporation about using magnetic pulse welded materials in their vehicles.