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Commercially available Generation 3 (GEN3) advanced high strength steels (AHSS) have inherent capability of replacing press hardened steels (PHS) using cold stamping processes. 980 GEN3 AHSS is a cold stampable steel with 980 MPa minimum tensile strength that exhibits an excellent combination of formability and strength. Hot forming of PHS requires elevated temperatures (> 800°C) to enable complex deep sections. 980 GEN3 AHSS presents similar formability as 590 DP material, allowing engineers to design complex geometries similar to PHS material; however, its cold formability provides implied potential process cost savings in automotive applications. The increase in post-forming yield strength of GEN3 AHSS due to work and bake hardening contributes strongly toward crash performance in energy absorption and intrusion resistance.

Adhesive bonding has gained a lot of popularity on the automotive industry on recent years. The technology has helped OEMs to build lighter vehicles by enabling the joint of dissimilar, lighter materials as well as joints that otherwise could not be welded or bolted together due to the lack of machine and operator access. It has also seen widespread usage to enhance crash performance, due to its ability to distribute stress uniformly and absorb energy. Past test reports had shown that adhesive bonding may have a poor performance when used on Zn-Fe (Galvanneal - GA) coated steel sheets, as the superficial coating layer may delaminate from the base steel, not allowing the adhesive to perform properly. The objective of this paper is to analyze the performance of adhesive bonding on GA coated steels when utilized alongside weld spots.

In the vehicle development, part design has a huge influence in its mass, cost and performance. In addition, the part design can be helpful to solve some structure issues such as sheet metal cracks and boom noise, and at the same time achieving the project requirements in performance tests as crash, durability, noise and vibration (N&V) etc. Some design changes as adding reinforcements in the structure and increase the part thickness are largely used by the design engineers. On the other hand, these changes has a great potential for increase mass, cost and affect directly the fuel consumption, which are very sensitive factors for the OEM′s. In order to achieve its target some options may be considered like the use of aluminum or premium material such as Advance High Strength Steel (AHSS) or Pre Hardened Steel (PHS), which has a high cost considering the common sheet metal used in the vehicle structures.