Why press hardening steel is “hot” now for auto designers
A quick overview of the current trends for hot-stamped automotive steels and the development of PHS 2000.
A quick overview of the current trends for hot-stamped automotive steels and the development of PHS 2000.
We interview two of SSAB’s experts on press hardening steels to find out about:
It’s a brand new standard but already car manufacturers have used it to develop their own OEM standards. The VDA name for the new PHS grade is CR1900T-MB-DS, which corresponds to SSAB’s grade Docol® PHS 2000, which goes up to a tensile strength of two gigapascals, or 2000MPa.
There are many different possible applications, but high on the list are EV battery enclosures, where no intrusion is allowed — which is particularly challenging for the side impact crash test. So automotive OEMs will be using PHS 2000MPa steel in safety components like cross beams in the floor area, between the side rocker panels, to protect the EV battery.
Oh yes, PHS 2000 — and PHS 1800 — isn’t just for EVs: it will be useful for ICE (internal combustion engine) cars as well. It can be used wherever designers either need maximum steel strength or weight reduction by using thinner walls.
The classic automotive application for boron press hardening steels is the vehicle’s A and B pillars. But PHS is also used in roof rails, sidewall members, roof and dash panel cross members, as well as the reinforcement of doors, windshield pillars, and floors. You’ll note that the current designs of these hot-stamped parts tend to feature highly complex geometries, which is where PHS steels excel.
Right. A hot stamping die can be segmented to have different quenching processes. For example, to create a PHS “soft cell” you don’t quench the entire part. The covered, unquenched part will have a lower strength level which, in turn, can absorb high energy during a crash. The quenched segment of the part, which has higher tensile strength, will withstand high forces. There has been a lot of development in recent years on PHS soft cells. For example, making a soft cell for the lower part of the car’s B pillar.
Yes. A tailor rolled blank is a strip of steel that is cold rolled to have different thicknesses across the width of the strip. So you can specify were you want the strip to be thicker and where you want it to be thinner, based on your ultimate requirements for the part and how you want it to perform.
A tailer welded blank can be even more varied: you can weld together strips of PHS that have different thickness, or even weld a PHS steel strip to a non-PHS steel strip.
Think about it: you have a boron steel that you heat and stamp at 900°C. At that temperature, you can readily hot stamp the PHS into very complex shapes with deep sections. So with that kind of design freedom, car designers can be more creative with their components. Maybe that means leveraging PHS’s high tensile strength to design lighter parts. Maybe design freedom translates into few parts — parts consolidation. And maybe design freedom means parts that perform better in crash tests.
Well, the standard augment for heat treatable steel is that you have little or no springback and that, in turn, leads to better shape accuracy. That sticks in many people’s minds as AHSS tensile strengths get higher and higher and springback has the potential to increase.
But on the other hand, we’ll also understand better than ever — and can better predict and control — springback in cold formed car components, even when using gigapascal steels.
Of course, a lot depends on your part’s design: rather than just assuming you must pay more for using PHS steels to avoid springback, talk to your AHSS supplier early on in your design concept process. Many design concepts, with slight modifications and the proper sequence of production steps, can be successfully cold formed with very good final shape accuracy.
Yes. We always work closely with our customers. But in this case the customer, Gestamp, approached us with a very specific request: “Can you develop a press hardening steel with 2000 megapascal tensile strength but with the ductility of 22MnB5 (1500MPa tensile strength)? We want use it in our idea for a lighter bumper.” We saw the value of a 2000 MPa steel for other safety components too, so we said yes.
That’s right. As you know, with press hardened steels the fabricator develops the final mechanical properties of the steel as they heat, form, and then quench the steel. And many different factors come into play: How long is the steel in their furnace and at what temperature? What cooling media are they using in the tool? What is the contact pressure between the tool and the material?
And all of these OEM and Tier 1 hot-stamping processes are proprietary — each one can process the PHS steel differently. Gestamp doesn’t even share their hot-stamping information with us! (laughs) But we had to make a PHS 2000 steel that will work for multiple car OEMs. So it was quite challenging.
To get the PHS 2000 to the required ductility levels, SSAB was left to focus on the steel’s chemical composition and our processing systems in our mills. That and providing customers with the recommended furnace temperature and the cooling rate — the minimum cooling rate necessary to achieve the steel’s martensitic microstructure and therefore its ultimate tensile strength.
They would test our materials using their press hardening tools. Their feedback and tests were extremely valuable as we made iterations to the PHS 2000 steel. Working so closely with them really sped up our learning and theirs.
The Gestamp PHS 2000 steel bumper is 17% lighter and still cost-effective. So it was a win-win for both Gestamp and SSAB.
Press Hardening Steel (PHS) | Martensitic Steel (MS) | |
Part forming process | Hot stamping | Cold forming |
Highest tensile strength | 2000 MPa | 1700 MPa |
Design freedom for complex parts (e.g., deep sections, etc.) | Very high: at 900°C, parts are readily shaped into complex designs | Complex designs may need to be modified for cold forming techniques |
Springback | Greatly reduced or eliminated | Needs to be predicted and controlled |
Final shape accuracy | Very good | Very good when springback is properly managed |
Tooling | Much more expensive | Less expensive |
Production times | Much slower | Much faster |
Energy use/CO2 footprint for forming | Very high | Lower |
Total cost of part | Higher | Lower |
Popularity (% of car body) | Growing | Growing |