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Mechanical Properties and Microstructure of High-Strength Steel Controlled by Hot Stamping Process

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Abstract

A novel design and manufacturing method, dubbed “precast,” of the cooling system and tools for a hot forming process was proposed in this paper. The integrated structures of the punch and blank holder were determined by analyzing the bending and reverse-bending deformation of the forming parts. The desired crashworthiness performance of an automotive front bumper constructed with this process was obtained by a tailored phase transformation, which generated martensite-bainite in the middle and full martensite transformation in the corner areas. Varying cooling effects in the formed parts caused the highest temperature to be located in the bottom and the lowest on the end of the formed parts. Moreover, the microstructural distributions demonstrated that the bottom possessed a relatively lower content of martensite, while, conversely, the end possessed a higher content. This was precisely the most desired phase distributions for the hot formed parts. For the six-process cycle stamping, the temperatures reached a stable status after an initial rapid increase in the first three process cycles. The microstructural results verified the feasibility of the hot forming tools under multiprocess cycles.

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Acknowledgments

This project is supported by the Key Project of Chinese National Programs (No. 2016YFB0101704) and the National Key Research and Development Program of Hunan Province (2017GK2090). We thank Sara Maccagnano-Zacher, Ph.D., from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Hang Ou, Guangyao Li & Junjia Cui

  2. Joint Center for Intelligent New Energy Vehicle, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Hang Ou, Guangyao Li & Junjia Cui

  3. College of Automobile and Mechanical Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, 410114, China

    Xu Zhang

  4. School of Mechanical Engineering, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, China

    Junrui Xu

Authors
  1. Hang Ou
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  2. Xu Zhang
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  3. Junrui Xu
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  4. Guangyao Li
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  5. Junjia Cui
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Correspondence to Junjia Cui.

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Ou, H., Zhang, X., Xu, J. et al. Mechanical Properties and Microstructure of High-Strength Steel Controlled by Hot Stamping Process. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 27, 4025–4035 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-018-3290-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-018-3290-1

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