New High Strength Steels Help Automakers Reach Future Goals for Safety, Affordability, Fuel Efficiency and Environmental Responsibility 2001-01-3041

Vehicle weight reduction, reduced costs and improved safety performance are the main driving forces behind material selection for automotive applications. High strength steels (HSS) have demonstrated their ability to meet these demands and consequently have been the fastest growing light-weighting material in vehicle structures for the past decade. The evolution in steel technology in recent years has produced new grades of highly formable, advanced high strength steel (AHSS) grades that will continue to meet these automotive demands into the next decade. This paper describes how the remarkable combination of formability, strength, ductility, durability, strain-rate sensitivity and strain hardening characteristics of the AHSS grades enable affordable weight reduction while improving crash safety.

ULSAB-Advanced Vehicle Concepts (AVC) raises automotive steel design to new levels of mass and performance optimization through extensive use of ultra high strength steels (UHSS) and advanced high strength steels (AHSS) in vehicles designed to satisfy future environmental and crashworthiness mandates. This paper defines these advanced steels, compares their metallurgical structures, alloy design, and mechanical behavior to those qualities in the current family of high strength steels (HSS), and reviews the rationale for using these materials in vehicles for 2004 and beyond. Included in the discussion are Dual Phase (DP) Steels, Transformation Inducted Plasticity (TRIP) Steels, Complex Phase (CP) Steels, and Martensitic (Mart) Steels.