Ever since the oil shortage of the 1970s and the introduction of tougher environmental regulations, the automotive community has been challenged to push initiatives leading to higher vehicle fuel efficiency. Initial efforts worked to downsize vehicles, while at the same time substituting the traditional body-on-frame, rear-wheel drive architecture, with the lower mass unibody, front wheel drive architecture. Lighter vehicles with smaller and more efficient powertrains have led to significant improvement in fuel economy. Since then, customer driven requirements for more personalized driving characteristics such as increased cockpit comfort, accessories, enhanced performance, functionality, and safety have allied with relatively affordable fuel prices to once again lead the North American industry to steadily increase vehicle size, powertrain displacement and a return to rear wheel drive architecture, while still meeting stringent fuel economy requirements. This paper covers the current automotive trends towards advanced materials utilization for the body-in-white at DaimlerChrysler North American Group in order to meet the requirements of light-weighting while maintaining or increasing overall vehicle safety. Steel is shown to be a strong contender for mass production type operations due to its high elastic modulus, ease of processing, recyclability, and properties associated with the different steel grades. New steel grades with increasingly attractive properties such as high work hardening rates, increased strength-to-ductility ratios, and bake hardenability, have expanded the already broad range of steel products for various automotive applications for steel products. These developments continue to demonstrate the steel industry's capability of providing engineered solutions for weight reduction and vehicle performance improvement while utilizing the existing automotive manufacturing infrastructure.


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    Title :

    Advanced steel products for lightweighting at DaimlerChrysler


    Additional title:

    Moderne Stahlerzeugnisse für den Leichtbau bei DaimlerChrysler


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2006


    Size :

    11 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 21 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English





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