Abstract: Aimed at the problem that hot-forming steel parts occur large distortion after the laser welding of body-in-white, a geometry compensation method was presented to eliminate the impact of weld-induced distortion, and the process of this method was established. The welding-induced distortion was accurately predicted based on finite element method. The geometry compensation solution of B-pillar was obtained utilizing optimal Latin hypercube method, Kriging metamodel technology and particle swarm optimization algorithm. Results show that the optimized B-pillar is in a good agreement with the ideal design after laser welding procedure.

Key words: body-in-white, laser welding, distortion prediction, geometry compensation method, Kriging metamodel, particle swarm optimization algorithm