An aluminium sandwich sheet is the composite adhered by rolling two aluminum panels to one plastic core. If it has the same bending stiffness as an steel sheets, it is about 65% lighter than steel sheet and 30% lighter than aluminum sheet. In present study, we intend to develop application technologies of an aluminum sandwich sheet for auto body panels from selecting composed materials of aluminium sandwich sheets to fabricating prototype. For this study, for the application of a light sandwich sheet to an automotive hood part, ribbing process so called, hemming for which joined between an inner and an outer panel was introduced. From these results, it was found that the sandwich sheet could improve the weight and maintain the flexural rigidity simultaneously comparing to the steel sheet.

To fabricate the 5182 aluminum-polymer sandwich panels, the strength of 5182 aluminum panels, which are the skin sheets that constitutes the sandwich composite panels, is changed according to the degree of heat treatment after rolling, and the characteristics of sandwich panel are also changed. In addition, in the stress-strain curves of the sandwich panel, the serration behavior observed in the 5182 aluminum alloy sheet is also observed. This serration behavior causes surface roughness during sheet forming, which is a serious problem in application to automotive body sheet. In this study, the tensile properties of the 5182 aluminum sandwich panels at room and elevated temperature were carefully investigated by tensile test. It can be found that when the aluminum surface sheets having insufficient heat treatment time is applied, the serration behavior does not completely disappear from the temperature of the room temperature to 160℃.

The objective of this study was to develop formability evaluation techniques in order to apply aluminum sandwich panel for automotive body parts. For this purpose, formability evaluation by using FLD (forming limit diagram) was carried out in order to secure the fundamental data for the measurement of sheet metal forming and the establishment of optimum forming conditions of the aluminum sandwich panel. From the results of these formability evaluation, the formability of aluminum alloy sheet which was the skin component for the sandwich panel was higher than that of sandwich panel. In addition, the formability of sandwich sheet which was made by present study was same as that of sandwich panel made by foreign country. Also, it was found that sandwich panel made in present study could have the excellent deep draw-ability when it was compared to the foreign made sandwich panel.