ToughSteel Event

Academic workshop – Fracture toughness to address formability and safe design of sheet products in the automotive industry

The automotive sector is facing new challenges to meet the stringent demands on lightweighting using sustainable materials. Advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) have been the dominant material to safer and lighter build body-in-white and chassis parts. AHSS are characterised by their unique mechanical properties, combining high strength and excellent impact performance. However, AHSS have also introduced new challenges to sheet metal stampers and components manufacturers related to their cracking susceptibility. Because of their limited ductility, high strength sheet materials are more prone to the occurrence of cracks during cold forming (edge-cracking) or under impact conditions. The limitations of the processes currently used in metal forming cause productivity losses due to defects resulting limited formability, inaccurate quality assessment or cracks, which cannot be predicted in the product design stage using traditional experimental or computational approaches.

New approaches, based on the evaluation of fracture toughness in metallic sheets are gaining interest for steelmakers, part makers and OEMs, as a relevant property for new AHSS development and optimisation, and for designing and manufacturing lightweight high-performance parts. The ToughSteel project, coordinated by Eurecat Technology Center, involves and engages the main actors of the sheet metal forming community with the objective to promote, disseminate and transfer the know-how acquired about the use of fracture toughness as a tool to address cracking problems in forming and in-service performance of AHSS. This seminar is part of the ToughSteel activities, aiming at approaching to the engineering students the recent developments in materials testing and characterization to select materials and design structural and safety-related auto body parts.

15th November 2022

16.00h – 18.00h CET

UPC – Manresa, Edificio MN1. Av. de les Bases de Manresa, 61-73 08242 Manresa

 

Eurecat