Development of hot rolled steel sheet with 600 MPa UTS for automotive wheel application

The aim of this paper is to develop a steel having tensile strength of 600 MPa minimum combined with good formability, hole expansion and fatigue strength through a new metallurgical approach for such application. The steel, thus developed, has been successfully applied to automotive wheel disc making. Discs made of 600 MPa strength showed improved durability in dynamic cornering fatigue and dynamic radial fatigue test. This novel steel will be a solution to solve the lack of stretch flangeability and bend-ability of advanced high strength steel (AHSS) sheets such as dual phase (DP) and transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) steels. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.