The competitive advantage of these steels is that they possess a good balance of mechanical properties along with good weldability and cold formability, so they can be used for the lightweighting of automotive components. Furthermore, they preserve high elongation values after the stamping process, which gives them good resistance to impact.
These steels, aligned with the 3rd generation of advanced high resistance steels have been developed in conjunction with ACERINOX within the ULTRASLIM Project (RFCS programme) and a patent application has been submitted. They are based on modifications of the AISI 201 steel composition, with less Ni content. For their design, predictive models have been combined with statistical and optimisation techniques to define the most appropriate range of each alloy element.
With the good balance of properties obtained (tensile strength of more than 1,100 MPa, elongation of 35% and a large capacity for energy absorption in the event of impact), the new steels can be used to significantly reduce the weight of components with complex shapes and/or resistance to impact requirements.
