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This paper describes a joint project between Ford, the American Iron & Steel Institute, the University of Louisville, and the U. S. Army to reduce the weight of a full size pick-up truck by 25%, while keeping incremental costs to a minimum. Several alternate technologies were evaluated for each system, subsystem, and component of the vehicle and based on analysis of all combinations of these technologies, the solution which yielded the best overall cost and weight balance, while meeting all of the functional requirements, was selected. The major focus of the project was to develop new steel architectures and materials, since this would assure the maintenance of the lowest possible cost, though the study was not restricted to steel alone. The project was successful in meeting all of its targets, and a vehicle was built to demonstrate the feasibility of the various concepts.

Impact strength of pickup box floor panels is determined using a test called “The Drum Drop Test”. This drum drop test is one of the key verification requirements in the design of the pickup box floor panels. Non-linear CAE analysis is done in order to assess the performance of the pickup box design for this requirement. In this paper, a sensitivity study of various parameters that affect the performance of the pickup box floor panels is presented. Critical parameters are identified which would drive the design of the floor panels. This paper also highlights the weight reduction opportunity by using high strength steels for the design of floor panels.

Even though the use of AHSS such as DP590 for body structure applications is becoming relatively common among automobile manufacturers, application of AHSS for chassis structures is relatively new. Chassis structures such as frames and sub-frames typically use hot rolled steel grades in the yield strength range of 220 MPa to 250 MPa. For body-on-frame vehicles, the primary load carrying and energy absorbing structure is the frame. Therefore, hot rolled AHSS such as HR DP590 would be key enablers for weight reduction and strength enhancement of these structures. This paper presents a case for developing AHSS grades for chassis structures, some of the challenges for implementing them, and related work done at Ford Motor Company.

Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) such as DP590 HDGI are helping automakers meet increasingly higher structural performance requirements while maintaining or reducing weight of the vehicle body structure [7]. One of the issues facing design engineers implementing new materials such as AHSS is the lack of understanding the expected material variability within a steel supplier and also from one steel supplier to another; and how the variability affects product attribute performances. In this paper, we present an analysis of the aggregated mechanical property variability data obtained from several steel suppliers for a popular AHSS grade and also present studies related to the effect of material variability on structural responses.

Today, the interior noise perceived by the occupants is becoming an important factor driving the design standards for the design of most of the interior assemblies in an automotive vehicle. Buzz, Squeak and Rattle (BSR) is a major contributor towards the perceived noise of annoyance to the vehicle occupants. An automotive vehicle consists of many assemblies such as instrumentation panel, doors, sun/moon-roof, deck lids, hood, etc. which are the potential sources of BSR noise. The potential locations of critical BSR noise could be contained within such assemblies as well as across their boundaries. An extensive study is made regarding the overall structural behavior as well as their interaction under typical road loads to come up with enhanced design for improved quality from the BSR noise perspective. The alternative designs were comparatively evaluated for their relative noise level from buzz, squeak and rattle perspective using an analytical tool - N-hance.BSR.

Automobile body panels made from advanced high strength steel (AHSS) provide high strength-to-mass ratio and thus AHSS are important for automotive light-weighting strategy. However, in order to increase their use, the significant wear damage that AHSS sheets cause to the trim dies should be reduced. The wear of dies has undesirable consequences including deterioration of trimmed parts' edges. In this research, die wear measurement techniques that consisted of white-light optical interferometry methods supported by large depth-of-field optical microscopy were developed. 1.4 mm-thick DP980-type AHSS sheets were trimmed using dies made from AISI D2 steel. A clearance of 10% of the thickness of the sheets was maintained between the upper and lower dies. The wear of the upper and lower dies was evaluated and material abrasion and chipping were identified as the main damage features at the trim edges.

In recent years, implementation of dual phase (DP) Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) and Ultra High Strength Steels (UHSS) is increasing in automotive components due to their superior structural performance and vehicle weight reduction capabilities. However, these materials are often sensitive to trimmed edge cracking if stretching along sheared edge occurs in such processes as stretch flanging. Tool wear is another major issue in the trimming of UHSS because of higher contact pressures at the interface between cutting tools and sheet metal blank caused by UHSS’s higher flow stresses and the presence of a hard martensitic in the microstructure. The objective of the present paper is to discuss the methodology of analyzing die wear for trimming operations of UHSS components and illustrate it with some examples of tool wear analysis for trimming 1.5mm thick DP980 steel.