ENFASS

ENhanced Formality Assessment of AHSS sheets

DYNAmore joined an international research consortium of key partners such as Voestalpine Steel (Austria), Tata Steel Technology (The Netherlands), Daimler AG (Germany), Virtual Vehicle (Austria) and academia (University of Twente) in a three-year EU project entitled ENFASS to improve the application of modern, advanced high-strength steel sheets in the automotive industry.

AHSS (Advanced High Strength Steel) is one option to realize lightweight car concepts which enables a part weight reduction up to 40% while maintaining the crash performance of the parts. Consequently, the usage of AHSS in automotive applications has increased in recent years. Nevertheless, the design of AHSS parts is still challenging due to divergent material behavior compared to conventional steel grades and steadily increasing part complexity. Existing uncertainties in numerical modeling AHSS formed parts – especially complex parts – constitute a major barrier to further increase AHSS applications in modern car bodies. In particular, the ability to reliably assess the formability of AHSS sheets and to simulate the forming process of AHSS parts plays a more and more crucial role in today’s car body construction. Therefore, this project focuses to enhance the efficient and economical use of this modern high strength steels through optimizing the reliability of formability assessment of AHSS sheets.

The new experimental material characterization approach developed in combination with the also developed numerical failure model will enable to reliably predict formability of AHSS parts. The results will be highly beneficial to industry and also beneficiary concerning scientific and technical prospects like innovative design and economical parts, enhanced reliability during manufacturing, improvement of customer support and optimization of steel grades.