HOT PRESS FORMING CONCEPT IN DEVELOPMENT

OF AUTOMOTIVE BODY PARTS

Ahmad Fauzan Bin Zakaria
TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Concept
– Material
– Heating
– Quenching
• Conclusion
• Reference
 ABSTRACT
• Material properties of blank, thermal process, forming and quenching of
hot press forming concept are reviewed.
• The investigations of all process sequences starting from the properties of
ultra-high strength steel material use until quenching process are
described.
• Issues regarding coating of blank are also been reviewed.
• Aims to provide hot press forming process background and reveals the
possible potentials for further investigations in development of hot press
forming.
 INTRODUCTION
• What is hot press forming?
 Plannja a company from Sweden has patented and
developed hot press that was used in the process of
making saw blades and lawn mower.
 Hot press forming is a technology that can increase
blank tensile strength at the end of the process.
 In 1984, Saab automobile was the first automotive
manufacturer that used hardened boron steel
component for the Saab 9000 (Berglund, 2008).
 Most hot stamped parts applied in the automotive
industry are chassis component such as A-pillar, B-pillar,
bumper, roof rail and tunnel as shown below.
 Using high strength steels in hot stamping for automotive
inner body panels offers fuel saving by reducing in weight
and enhances driver and passenger safety due to its higher
strength.
 There are two main different methods exist in hot
stamping process which are the direct and indirect hot
stamping.

Direct HPF process. (Karbasian and Tekkaya, 2010)

Indirect hot stamping process. (Karbasian and Tekkaya, 2010)

 Direct hot stamping process starts with a blank is heated
up in furnace at austenitization temperature, then
transferred to the press machine and subsequently formed
and quenched in the closed tool.
 Indirect hot stamping process starts with the blank are pre-
cold forming then quenching and calibration operation
begin right after the parts are transferred from
austenitization process (Merklein, Lechler, and Stohr,
2008).
 To achieve high strength components, blanks should be
heated above austenitic temperature and quenched rapidly
such that full martensite transformation will occur and can
increase tensile strength up to 1500 Mpa.
 CONCEPT

• Ultra High Strength Steel Material

• Heating
• Forming and Quenching
 Ultra High Strength Steel Material
• The demands on weight reduction, low fuel consumption,
improve in safety and crashworthiness qualities stimulate
the need to develop automotive parts from ultra-high
strength steel material.
• Investigations on ultra-high strength steel by (Naderi, 2007)
indicate that boron alloys of 22MnB5, 27MnCrB5 and
37MnB4 steel grades which can develop fully martensitic
transformation after heat treatment by quenching.
• Initially, the blank contains a form of ferritic–pearlitic
microstructure with a tensile strength of 600 MPa. A total
strength of 1500 MPa components can be developed after
HPF process which can be transformed into full martensitic
microstructure.
• Manganese (Mn) and Chromium (Cr) one of the alloying
elements are known to have small effects on hardenability,
they are essential for shifting of existence fields. Thus, the
desired hardenability and phase transformation can be
achieved by technically reasonable cooling rates (Garcia et
al., 2002).
 • Most of the hardenability influences by the boron element,
whereas boron slows down the conversion into softer
microstructure and form to a martensitic microstructure.
Table 1. Chemical components and mechanical properties of boron steels.
(Naderi,2007)

Steel Al B C Cr Mn N Ni Si Ti
22MnB5 0.03 0.002 0.23 0.16 1.18 0.005 0.12 0.22 0.040
27MnCrB5 0.03 0.002 0.25 0.34 1.24 0.004 0.01 0.21 0.042
37MnB4 0.03 0.001 0.33 0.19 0.18 0.006 0.02 0.31 0.046

Steel Martensite Critical Yield stress in MPa Tensile Strength in Mpa

start cooling rate
temperature in C/s As Hot As Hot
in ºC delivered stamped delivered stamped
22MnB5 410 27 457 1010 608 1478
27MnCrB5 400 20 478 1097 638 1611
37MnB4 350 14 580 1378 810 2040

• In order for 22MnB5 to develop full martensitic

transformation and hardness, a blank is austenitized inside
the continuous-feed furnace at elevated temperatures
between 900 and 950 Celcius for four to ten minutes.
• The heated blank subsequently transferred by a transfer
unit into internally cooled transfer unit. The complex
shapes can be formed when material has excellent
formability at high temperature within 650 to 850 Celsius
(Taylan, 2010).
• For the material to achieve full martensitic transformation,
formed part must be cooled in the closed die set by
internally cooled water circulation at a cooling speed of
30oC/s to 100oC/s during forming process (Hein, 2006).
• At a temperature around 400oC, a difussionless martensitic
transformation will be induced if the cooling rate exceeds
27oC/s, which finally responsible for resulting in high
strength (Merklein, Lechler, and Stohr, 2008).
Coating
• Most of the blanks are pre-coated with protective layer in
order to abstain from sheet surface oxidation and
decarburization. The Al-Si widespread protection layer is
used as a layer preventing scale on steel during the direct
hot stamping. The influence of thermal process parameters
on the chemical behaviour of the Al-Si layer has been
investigated by Borsetto, Ghiotti, and Brushi (2009).
• For a typical hot stamping process at heating temperature
of 950 Celsius, an alternating variation of the chemical Al-Fe
percentage appears by a sub-layer structure characterized
(Borsetto, Ghiotti, and Brushi, 2009). This protective layer
prevents the formation of scales in the direct hot stamping.
• The hot-dip aluminized sheets cannot be used for indirect
hot stamping process and they are not suitable for cold
forming due to it lower forming limits of the Al-Si layer
compared to the base material in the room state
temperature.
• Hot-dip galvanized 22MnB5 can only be used for indirect
hot stamping process in order to minimize the propagation
of micro cracks in the coating layer into the base material.
 Heating
• Heating of the blank to austenitization temperature is the
beginning of the HPF process. Heating approach of the steel
sheet is one of crucial process that influence the process
time, the final part properties, and the cost efficiency of
HPF (Lechler, 2009).
• The annealing tests conducted by Zhu et al. (2014)
considered the austenitization temperature and time to
determine the most suitable austenitizating parameters in
order to achieve completely homogeneous microstructure.
• In these test, different austenitization temperature and
time were performed, characterized by steps of 2, 5 and 10
min; at 850℃ to 950℃. The investigation indicated
austenitizing temperature between 900℃ and 950 ℃ with a
dwell time of 5 minutes assured a complete austenitization
without significant grain coarsening while little ferrite
structure appear when austenitization temperature at
850℃ for 5 minutes dwell time and 900℃ for 2 minutes
dwell time.
Roller Heath Furnace
• The roller hearth furnace is a continuous or batch furnace
concept that allows processing of small product in trays and
baskets or larger product directly on the furnace
hearth. The hearth consists of series of steel, alloy or
ceramic rolls which are supported and driven external to
the furnace chamber.
• Furnaces can be provided in electric, direct fired and
indirect gas fired configurations to meet specific processing
requirements.
• Basically, blank is heated through roller heath furnace or
single furnace. Furnaces structure depends on connected
load and size of the material used to be heated. Roller
heath furnace are suitable for annealing, bright annealing,
normalizing reheating, stress relieving or tempering and
capable operating up to 1150 ℃.
Induction Heating
• By concept, induction furnace or heating is an electrical
furnace in which the heat is applied by induction heating of
metal. Basically, all electricity conducting and
semiconducting material can be heated up by induction
method. Due it’s clean, energy-efficient and well
controllable furnace, this technology is widely used for bulk
forming and tempering, mostly used to melt metals.
• The efficiency of the furnace is reflected by the geometry of
the inductor which determines the position of the magnetic
field relative to the work piece. Other factor such as the
distance between the inductor and sheet also has an effect
on the efficiency of heating. Shaped blanks tend to go out
shape while being heated if the electrical insulation
between inductor and sheet are not guaranteed.
• The jamming of the heated blank can causes by a small
distance to the inductor with the risk of damaging whole
heating system (Kolleck et al., 2009). Between induction
furnace and roller heath furnace, induction furnace is two
times energy efficiency because of the higher losses of the
roller heath system by exhaust gases and the rollers.
Rapid Resistance Heating
• By principle, two electrodes are attached to edge a blank
for current to flow through. The resistance of the blank
causes the heating. Based on Joule’s Law, the process by
which the passage of an electric current through
a conductor releases heat and the heat produced
was proportional to the square of the current multiplied by
the electrical resistance of the electrical circuit.
• The importance use of rapid resistance heating is the
efficiency factor. The heating process only takes 2 seconds
to heat temperature of 900 ℃. The formation of oxide scale
can be prevented due to rapid heating
• Even though the resistance heating system offers great
advantages, there are some limitations and disadvantages
for HPF. The change in cross-sectional area in the current
direction for non-square sheets brings about non-uniform
distribution of temperature, i.e. the temperature is high for
small and low for large cross-sectional areas, respectively.
 Forming and Quenching
• In order to prevent the blank from cooling, the blanks must
quickly been transferred to the press from furnace.
Moreover, the blanks must be formed and completed
before the beginning of martensitic transformation.
Therefore, a fast and efficient tool for closing and forming
process is the pre-condition in order to get successful
process control.
• In order to achieve higher cooling rate and homogeneous
temperature distribution of the hot forming part, the tool
must be designed to have an efficient cooling system.
Hence, the cooling channel system must be embedded into
the tool with cooling ducts as close to the tool contour.
However, due to constraints in drilling, the geometry of
cooling ducts is restricted.
• The higher demand in industry for higher efficiency
ineluctably leads to the effectiveness to shorten the process
cycle on hot sheet metal forming process. Cooling rate can
be improved by the application of tool steels with improved
thermal conductivity and more efficient cooling channel
system (Casas et al., 2008).
 CONCLUSION
• This paper intended to introduce a basic concept of HPF. Ultra high
strength steel materials offer high tensile strength and suitable for HPF
technology. Most of the sheet metals used for HPF are pre-coated to avoid
oxide scale formation during austenitization process.
• The total cycle time for press hardened is mainly relying on the die closing
time and the furnace residence time required to austenitize the blank. By
optimized the cooling of the die or the tool used can shorten in cycle time.
A reduction in the furnace residence time can be achieved by using faster
heating system such as rapid resistance heating. Therefore, rapid
resistance heating is the alternative technology that exhibit great potential
for the future in HPF.
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