Page 47 - MetalForming April 2017

Steel Market Development Institute’s Automotive Excellence Award in 2016.
Lasers Ideal for Localized Soft Zones
Gestamp, for its part, has been hot stamping from its earliest use in Europe, and now is exploring the use of lasers to create soft zones immedi- ately following the stamping process.
Today, soft zones can be placed in general areas of a part within the die by modifying the route of cooling water during quenching, with less-cooled sections becoming the soft zones. By leveraging advancements in simulation software and improved crash-test data, Gestamp has been working with lasers to better localize softness in what Belanger calls the fourth generation of hot-stamping evolution.
“Lasers soften the hot-stamped part very selectively, expanding the areas that can be softened and doing so in complex geometries to make the parts behave more specifically in a crash,” he explains.
To retain heat, the blanks quickly route to the press, and specially built dies, for forming and quenching.
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MetalForming/April 2017 45
Achieving such selective soft zones arises from Gestamp’s validation efforts, according to Belanger.
“We do have an extensive validation plan that starts at the foundational level, understanding material proper- ties and then modeling those to start designing with that material,” he says. “It’s important to understand the flow characterization of a material, espe-
cially in targeted soft zones. Then we scale that up into simple hat sections and identify three-point bending and axial crush on those hat sections. From there we make sure we can correlate a model to what we see in physical tests. We validate until we are comfortable designing and modeling in a full vehi- cle. This was our approach in produc- ing the Honda rear rails.”