Flat crimping for automobile bodywork: Process

Crimping is a cold assembly technique for metal sheets used in the automotive industry to shape opening parts such as doors, flaps or hoods. It is a major step in the vehicle manufacturing process, as it generally completes the assembly of exterior opening parts, directly exposed to the customer's view. This article provides an introduction to flat crimping of parts with simple geometries, in order to understand the physics of the process. The first paragraph illustrates the flat crimping process as used in the automotive industry. Other crimping techniques are also presented. The next paragraph is devoted to the various appearance and geometry problems generated by this process. It is important to be able to predict these, in particular using numerical simulation, which is the subject of a second article, "Flat crimping for automotive bodywork: numerical simulation" [BM 7 866] .