Forming Behavior of Isotropic Steel Sheets 2000-01-0413
The demand of automotive industries to reduce the fuel consumption and therefore the weight in vehicle construction are becoming more and more significant. The reduction of the weight in vehicle construction can be realized among other factors with lighter car bodies. Particularly the reduction of the sheet metal thickness in car bodies can provide a significant contribution to solve this problem.
In this case the use of high-strength steel is necessary.
Isotropic high-strength steels, so-called I-Steels (e.g. St250i) have been developed by the steel supplier SALZGITTER AG-Germany. These high-strength I-Steel sheets show direction-independent (“isotropic”) material qualities and a very good deep drawing behavior. With these I-Steels, interior components as well as outdoor panels can be produced.
In this paper, the isotropic characteristics of high-strength I-Steel materials are compared to the reference material DC04 (DDQ, deep drawing quality) with nearly the same strain-hardening coefficient (n-value) and same microsurface structure.
