Abstract
Keywords - Cross Car Beam, Tubular Hydroforming, Lightweight, Development Optimisation, Integration.
Abstract - The automotive industry seeks, as strategic aims, to reduce the cost and the weight of its products whereas to improve and optimise their performance. Focusing on instrument panel beams and looking for alternative processes, hydroforming provides the possibility to reduce the number of components and their assembly, dropping the weight and offering economic potentials without losing strength requirements.
Hydroforming was initially used to manufacture exhaust system pipes and chassis modules but, nowadays, has spread its applications to different components, specially to Body-in-White (BIW) elements. In that way, Gestamp Automoción has a large experience in some of them including instrument panel beams, also called, cross car beams (CCBs).