Increasing raw material and energy costs are the influencing factors for innovations in the automotive world. New high strength steel grades are an important factor for light weight designs in cars and especially in chassis components. In the past up to today, conventional C-Mn steels with a lower or medium strength level combined with sufficient formability have been used for many tubular components in front and rear subframes, twist beams or multilink suspension systems. Usually, all of these tubes are being formed by means of bending, hydroforming or alternative forming operations and joined mainly by MAG-welding. If highest strength values are needed, air, tool or water quenched steels are being used for related tube based axle designs. Typical examples are the Mn-B-steel BTR165 in twist beam axles or the air hardening steel BAS100 used in a front subframe in which same components have a wall thickness as small as 1,3mm. The latter is limited due to the performance and mainly by the alloying casts. An alternative is the new steel grade BNX 120 which substitutes the cast intensive alloying elements Mo and V without changing the main properties. Current investigations evaluate the behaviour with different surface treatments like batch galvanising or Zinc flake coating. Another steel group, which gains in importance for weight reduction in chassis applications, will became multi phase steels. In particular, ferrite bainite and complex phase steels will be applied in higher fractions. Hot or cold rolled strips are the basis for laser-or HF-welded tubes processed in twist beam axles or other tubular components. Benteler Rothrist as a tube supplier and Benteler Automotive as a steel tube processor will give a summary on the current status and the future trend for steel tube qualities for chassis applications.
Tubular steel components for light weight axle designs
Stahlrohrkomponenten für die Auslegung von Leitbauachsen
2011
10 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 8 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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