PNNL

Abstract

Multiphase advanced high strength steels (AHSS) are being increasingly used in the automotive industry due to their low cost, good availability and excellent combination of strength and ductility. There is a keen interest from the automotive and steel industry for more fundamental understandings on the key microstructure features influencing the macroscopic properties, i.e., tensile properties, hole-expansion ratio and localized formability of AHSS. In this study, the micro- and macro-level properties for eight commercial DP980 steels are first characterized and quantified with various experimental methods. Correlations between macroscopic-level properties and relationships between various micro- and macro- properties for these steels are then established based on the experimental measurements. It is found that, despite their differences in their chemistry, processing parameters and sheet thickness, the eight DP980 steels do have common microstructural level properties governing their specific macroscopic properties in terms of strength, elongation and hole expansion performance.