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Use of Modern High Strength Steels in Load Adapted Hydroformed B‐Pillars
Author(s) -
Urban Marcus,
Hirt Gerhard
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
steel research international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.603
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1869-344X
pISSN - 1611-3683
DOI - 10.2374/sri08sp112
Subject(s) - pillar , hydroforming , crash , structural engineering , load bearing , engineering , mechanical engineering , computer science , tube (container) , programming language
The increase of legal and insurance demands on B‐pillars calls for high strength steels and new process chains. Therefore, the hydroforming of high strength close‐to‐contour tailored tubes to load adapted B‐pillars was investigated. Modern high strength steels were identified for the use in B‐pillars. Their forming and crash behaviour was predicted with the aid of validated numerical models. The accuracy of the numerical models was increased significantly by taking the forming history into account. The design of the hydroformed B‐pillar considered a product concept catalogue (i.e. package, functional areas, crash performance) close to a reference B‐pillar. As a reference the deep drawn B‐pillar of the Mercedes‐Benz W203 was chosen. Using high strength materials in the close‐to‐contour tailored tubes led to a significant reduction of the number of parts and the weight of the B‐pillar compared to the reference.