Page 22 - MetalForming May 2012

Steel for the Automotive Industry
grades already being deployed in cur- rent products, our customers are demanding even higher strength as they prepare to meet the fuel-economy requirements of the new CAFE laws implemented for 2012-2016,” says Bart DePompolo, technical marketing man- ager at the United States Steel Auto- motive Center. “In response, we are developing coated and uncoated prod- ucts at 1180-MPa tensile strengths, already targeted at 2014 production- vehicle platforms.”
Added Capacity
for Multiphase Steels
In December 2010, United States Steel and Kobe Steel announced the construction of a new state-of-the-art continuous annealing line at their Pro- Tec Coating Company joint venture in Leipsic, OH. The new line, expected to reach full production by the end of 2013, will have the capacity to produce 500,000 tons annually of Dual-Ten, Trip-Ten and Multi-Ten steels at
strength levels to 1200 MPa, as well as tempered Mart-Ten steels to 1500 MPa. Looking to the future, the full capa- bility of this facility will be leveraged to produce the next generation of high- strength steels to provide grades at strength levels of 800 to 1500 MPa, with formability attributes that will exceed the current range of products, and martensitic steels with strength levels to 2000 MPa. This next generation of USS Safety Steel products will be tar- geted at providing automotive cus- tomers with increased design flexibility in achieving the advanced lightweight
designs of the future.
To demonstrate how these new grades
can help the automotive industry meet future objectives, an engineering design study recently was conducted to investigate the mass-reduction poten- tial of applying USS Safety Steels fam- ily of steels to a current production vehicle. The study demonstrated the potential for a 20-percent mass reduc- tion of the body structure when more
than 90 percent of the body structure was comprised of USS Safety Steel with an average strength of 750 MPa. This mass reduction was accomplished while maintaining the predicted high level of crash-safety performance, ride and handling attributes, and durabili- ty of the baseline vehicle without increasing the estimated manufactur- ing cost of the body structure.
The study includes hardware builds and full-scale testing to validate man- ufacturing and performance of criti- cal structural systems. As an added benefit, studies show that vehicles designed to be produced with these lightweight steels are advantaged, from a vehicle’s lifecycle carbon-emissions standpoint, compared to those vehicles that potentially employ competing materials with carbon intensities that can be six to 20 times higher than steel. (Lifecycle analysis considers carbon intensity of materials used in the vehi- cle, as well as that associated with its build, road life and eventual recycling).
Next-Gen Steels to Realize True Design Optimization
Vehicle makers’ desires for higher- strength steels, and the recent advanced steels developed to support those needs, have helped enable mass reduction relative to the grades they replaced, while providing the required performance in crash safety, ride, han- dling and durability. However, while these new grades provide sufficient formability to allow them to be manu- factured into the geometries needed for automotive designs, they still often require significant design concessions that compromise the full structural optimization and utility of the design.
The next generation of high-strength and more formable steels are antici- pated, to help resolve this conflict in realizing true design optimization. The added formability will enable designers to fully optimize the shape of compo- nents and take full advantage of the strength of these steels. This will allow a leap forward in design efficiency and mass reduction while achieving struc- tural performance targets. MF
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