Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Ultrahigh strength steel (UHSS) are increasingly demanded in automotive industry to reduce the weight ofvehicles, which will increase the fuel efficiency to reduce emission of greenhouse gas. Thanks to the superiorstrength, UHSS materials can also maintain the safety and crash survival standard. In addition, UHSS is lessexpensive compared to aluminum alloy, which makes UHSS become more and more attractive to automotivemanufacturers.However, traditional cold-stamping process is not suitable for producing UHSS parts due to their limitedformability and pronounced springback at room temperature. Therefore, hot-stamping process has beendeveloped for manufacturing UHSS parts. Due to the high temperature process involved, oxidation (scaling)and surface decarburization often occur during heating and stamping processes. It is desired to develop anefficient and economic method to provide an anti-oxidant coating for the substrate metals for hot stamping.Protective environment, such as inert gas atmosphere, was proved to be unpractical. Different antioxidantcoatings were also developed; however, the only commercially available, aluminized coated UHSS is notproviding satisfied performance for the industrial partner.The objective of this project is to develop an economic and efficient method to provide an effective andreliable anti-oxidant coating. Electroplating technique is proposed to deposit Zn-Ni alloy on the substrate metal to form as anti-oxidant coating. Zn-Ni alloy is proven to be a good anti-corrosion and high temperatureresistant material, which is chosen as the best candidate of the coating. Through electroplating technique, auniform, compact and high performance Zn-Ni alloy coating will be developed for hot-stamping application.