Grant: Alliance Grants

The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation towards electrification and fuel efficient gasoline/ hybrid vehicles. To increase mileage and reduce emissions while improving passenger safety, a multi-material architecture of high strength steel and aluminum is being pursued. To incorporate aluminum into the body, new grades of high strength 6xxx-series aluminum have been developed for cold stamping of structural components such as the A-pillar, B-pillar, roof beams and battery cases. However, leveraging the excellent formability, corrosion resistance and strength-to-weight ratios of these emerging alloys into components has been challenged by low fidelity of the material models used in virtual product design. Conventional strategies for the characterization and modelling of stamped structural components, which have historically focused upon steel, have proven inadequate to predict the behavior and final part geometry of high strength aluminum. The proposed research will develop the experimental and numerical modelling strategies to predict the formability and final part geometry of two variants of Novelis Advanz 6HS - s650 structural aluminum, a next generation 6xxx-series automotive alloy. The principal outcomes of this research are: (i) design and development of novel coupon-level tests to characterize plasticity under complex loading; (ii) evaluation and optimization of conventional-to-advanced plasticity models for springback prediction and (iii) practical application and critical assessment of the models for product design using two industrial-scale technology demonstrators representing a front rail and the B-pillar. The ability to virtually design aluminum components with Bowman Precision Tooling will showcase the potential for commercialization, creating market demand for these alloys and the expertise required for its application in the Canadian automotive sector from automakers to Tier 1 manufacturers, and aluminum producers like Novelis.