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Steel for production of automotive wheel discs with high mechanical properties and formability.
#Automotive industry
Business targets
Steel wheel discs occupy a significant part of today’s car market.
In the sector of trucks and buses only steel discs are used. To improve and make a competitive advantage of the product, we developed a steel technology with unique characteristics: high strength and ductility.
n order to provide necessary characteristics our R&D team obtained a dual-phase structure of steel, which consists of a viscous and plastic ferritic matrix in combination with strengthening phases. This ensures both good stampability and high strength of steel.
Implementation features
To produce this class of steel it is necessary to select an optimal chemical composition and accurately calculate temperature and speed parameters of a hot rolling mill. The task was accomplished using computer simulation of the production process. Critical points of the material were determined, and a number of special diagrams were drawn: thermokinetic, isothermal and phase transformations. The model was built taking into account the features of the production and equipment of the plant in Lipetsk and the plant in La Louviere, Belgium.
A series of melting and rolling operations was performed at the industrial site of the largest research center for structural materials Prometheus in St. Petersburg to optimize the obtained models.
Effect
An analysis of key consumers, their requirements, and an assessment of the potential market size showed that the new technology can increase the company’s total revenue by 1.7 % per year
See also
Steel for car body safety parts, tooling parts and fasteners.
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