Investigation on Hot Stamping Process for Door Beam of Ultra-High Strength Steel

Ultra-high strength steel is widely used for automobile parts to reduce the weight of automobile and enhance the safety performance. Compared with the traditional cold forming, hot stamping is more suitable for the manufacture of these parts. However, the imperfect technology restricts its application in the industry. To investigate the hot stamping process technology further, a numerical simulation and forming experiment were made in this paper with a door beam as an example. After process parameters analysis, the thickness, temperature and microstructure distribution of sheet during the whole hot stamping were predicted through the simulation, according which the microstructure of the part were full martensite and no fracture was produced. A door beam was well-formed in the experiment based on the results of simulation, and then a series of tests as metallographic observation, hardness test, tensile test and side impact test were carried out, studying its performance in practice.