Grant: Automotive Partnership Canada Project

This project will address the fabrication and crash response of ultra-high strength automotive components with tailored properties fabricated through hot stamping of boron steels. Hot stamped steels are fabricated by rapidly forming steels in the austenitic (red hot) condition within cooled dies that quench the material at a rate sufficient to cause a martensitic phase transformation. Strengths in excess of 1,500 MPa can be achieved using this processing route making these components highly desirable for use in anti-intrusion structural crash safety components within automobiles such as bumper beams. door intrusion beams, A- and B-pillars, roof and side rails. Previous work by the current project team within a recently completed two-year NSERC-CRD project has been successful in developing a ""laboratory-scale"" B-pillar with tailored properties. A segmented die was used with selective heating of individual die segments up to 400""C thereby allowing local control of quench rates during hot stamping with resulting control over the local properties within the as-formed part. Such tailored parts are the subject of considerable interest within the automotive sector since they will enable components with local high strength regions to prevent intrusion during crash, but with softer regions that can be designed to provide some energy absorption capabilities. This proposed Automotive Partnership Canada project will pick up from the previous CRD project to develop a tailored hot stamped component with optimized energy absorption characteristics. This project will feature experimental and analytical research that will serve as proof of concept of the tailored hot stamping processing route. The APC project activity will centre on the development of a multi-zone hot stamping die that will produce a hot stamped component suitable for mechanical testing and performance evaluation under both side impact and axial crush load cased. Optimization techniques will be developed in conjunction with finite element simulation of hot stamping to provide component and process design tools for use by out industrial partners to develop high performance structural crash components. The output of the optimization study will be validated through fabrication of a multi-zone hot stamping die to produce a component-scale multi-zone hot stamping suitable for impact testing. The impact tests will serve to assess the impact performance, in particular, identifying any issues in the transition zone between the hard martensitic zone and the softer bainitic zone of the part.