Search Results

For the purpose of saving natural resources and energy, the requirements of vehicle weight-saving have been increasing continuously. As for Automotive Suspension Coil Spring, its weight-saving has been achieved by increasing the design stress. Since the increase of design stress requires higher fatigue life and sag resistance, the strength of spring is usually increased. However, in case of the conventional spring steel, the high strength over σB=1900MPa can dramatically reduce the corrosion fatigue life of spring, to decrease the reliability of spring at the actual usage. In this paper, newly developed spring steel material, satisfying higher strength and corrosion fatigue life simultaneously, is proposed, and its application of Automotive Suspension Coil Spring under the appropriate spring manufacturing processes in introduced.

Application of microalloyed steel to automobile parts is becoming increasingly common in Japan. However, fatigue properties of actual automotive forged parts with slight notches on their surface have not been fully clarified. In this work, the fatigue properties of microalloyed steel were studied using test specimens and also actual automotive parts. The results indicated that microalloyed steel with an optimal microstructure showed higher notch fatigue resistance than quenched-tempered steel. The improvement of material technology and the application of microalloyed steel have not only served to bring product costs down, but have paved the way for part weight reductions. Lightweight connecting rods for the newly developed Nissan engines have been produced, contributing to improved engine performance.