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This study presents an innovative approach for selecting high-strength materials for fatigue dimensioning parts, considering both fracture toughness and fatigue performance. Warm and hot forming processes enable the construction of high-strength parts above 1000 MPa with complex geometries, making them suitable for lightweight chassis in automotive and freight applications. This research reveals that high-strength steels can experience up to a 40% reduction in fatigue performance due to manufacturing defects introduced during punching and trimming. Fracture toughness has been proposed as a good indicator of notch sensitivity, with a strong correlation of 0.83 between fracture toughness and fatigue notch sensitivity. Therefore, by combining fracture toughness measurements and fatigue resistance obtained through the rapid fatigue test, it becomes possible to quickly identify the most fatigue-resistant materials to deal with defects. Among the nine materials analysed, warm-formed steels show promising characteristics for lightweight chassis construction, with high fatigue resistance and fracture toughness exceeding the proposed fracture threshold of 250 kJ/m2., Validerad;2023;Nivå 2;2023-08-10 (joosat);Licens fulltext: CC BY License

High-strength steels are widely used in vehicle body-in-white, offering a good balance between crashworthiness and lightweight design. The increased requirements of heavier electric vehicles, in terms of fatigue resistance and crashworthiness, highlight that chassis parts have remarkable lightweighting potential. However, applying these grades in chassis parts is not straightforward, as the forming processes, like trimming, may introduce surface defects that compromise the fatigue resistance of the component. This work presents a material selection strategy for the applicability of high-strength steels in chassis parts of electric vehicles. The proposed approach allows the evaluation of the key parameters of the chassis parts in a simple way. The crash performance is evaluated through fracture toughness using the essential work of fracture (EWF) methodology. The method is applied to thin high-strength steel sheets employing double-edge notched tensile specimens (DENT). On the other hand, fatigue performance is investigated in terms of fatigue resistance for both notched and unnotched specimens. The results for different complex-phase and dual-phase steels show a good agreement between the EWF and the fatigue notch factor. The method could help apply high-strength steel to chassis parts, as designers will have a tool to focus the expensive fatigue tests on the best material candidates., Funder: Catalan Government - ACCIÓ-Eurecat (Project PRIV - RapidFat)Licens fulltext: CC BY License

Most solutions for a lightweight design are based on the implementation of AHSS, Al alloys or CFRP. However, not all these strategies are susceptible to be applied to truck chassis parts. These components require high fatigue resistance and thick sheets. Additionally, they are usually trimmed and punched, which is known to affect fatigue resistance. This work addresses the lightweight con-struction of truck parts through the warm forming of steel grades tailored to show high formability and fatigue behaviour. The fatigue limit was evaluated for different edge conditions (polished and punched) and rationalized using the cracking resistance described by fracture toughness. The con-sideration of both mechanical properties, fatigue, and fracture toughness, gives an innovative and useful tool to develop and select materials for fatigue dimensioned parts., Funder: Research Fund for Coal and Steel RFCS (800649);ISBN för värdpublikation: 978-3-95735-150-0, RFCS programme - Warmlight project

© 2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0, In press hardened steels, fatigue behaviour is very sensitive to surface defects or irregularities, either intrinsic or introduced during trimming operations. This work addresses the understanding and prediction of fatigue resistance of press hardened steels from a fracture mechanics approach. The size of fatigue originating defects were evaluated and used to estimate the fatigue limit for different surface conditions (coated and uncoated), different coatings (Al-Si and Zn) and different edge condition (polished and mechanically trimmed). Good agreement was found between calculated and experimental values, which shows the potential of fracture mechanics to estimate the fatigue performance of press hardened steels., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

The fracture toughness of four advanced high strength steel (AHSS) thin sheets is evaluated through different characterization methodologies, with the aim of identifying the most relevant toughness parameters to describe their fracture resistance. The investigated steels are: a Complex Phase steel, a Dual Phase steel, a Trip-Aided Bainitic Ferritic steel and a Quenching and Partitioning steel. Their crack initiation and propagation resistance is assessed by means of J-integral measurements, essential work of fracture tests and Kahn-type tear tests. The results obtained from the different methodologies are compared and discussed, and the influence of different parameters such as specimen geometry or notch radius is investigated. Crack initiation resistance parameters are shown to be independent of the specimen geometry and the testing method. However, significant differences are found in the crack propagation resistance values. The results show that, when there is a significant energetic contribution from necking during crack propagation, the specific essential work of fracture (we) better describes the overall fracture resistance of thin AHSS sheets than JC. In contrast, energy values obtained from tear tests overestimate the crack propagation resistance and provide a poor estimation of AHSS fracture performance. we is concluded to be the most suitable parameter to describe the global fracture behaviour of AHSS sheets and it is presented as a key property for new material design and optimization., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

In the last years, car bodies are increasingly made with new advanced high-strength steels, for both lightweighting and safety purposes. Among these new steels, high-manganese or TWIP steels exhibit a promising combination of strength and toughness, arising from the austenitic structure, strengthened by C, and from the twinning induced plasticity effect. Mechanical cutting such as punching or shearing is widely used for the manufacturing of car body components. This method is known to bring about a very clear plastic deformation and therefore causes a significant increase of mechanical stress and micro-hardness in the zone adjacent to the cut edge. To improve the cut edge quality, surface treatments, such as sandblasting, are often used. This surface treatment generates a compressive residual stress layer in the subsurface region. The monotonic tensile properties and deformation mechanisms of these steels have been extensively studied, as well as the effect of grain size and distribution and chemical composition on fatigue behaviour; however, there is not so much documentation about the fatigue performance of these steels cut using different strategies. Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse the fatigue behaviour of a TWIP steel after mechanical cutting with and without sandblasting in Low and High-Cycle Fatigue regimes. The fatigue behaviour has been determined at room temperature with tensile samples tested with a load ratio of 0.1 and load amplitude control to analyse High-Cycle Fatigue behaviour; and a load ratio of -1 and strain amplitude control to determine the Low-Cycle Fatigue behaviour. Samples were cut by shearing with a clearance value of 5%. Afterwards, a part of the cut specimens were manually blasted using glass microspheres of 40 to 95 microns of diameter as abrasive media. The results show a beneficial effect of the sandblasting process in fatigue behaviour in both regimes, load amplitude control (HCF) and strain amplitude control (LCF) tests, whe, Postprint (published version)