Hot stamping of thin-walled steel components

In recent years, hot stamping has been established as a standard process for mass manufacturing of various crash-relevant body-in-white components, as a result of the rising demand for car body's weight reduction and crashworthiness increase. To further exploit the lightweight potential of this forming technology, investigations on the hot stamping of thin-walled boron-manganese steel components were conducted in this thesis. A sensitivity analysis of the entire process chain towards the sheets thickness was carried out. The flow behavior and the formability were analyzed under different thermal conditions and the effect of diverse influential parameters was evaluated. For this purpose, a novel experimental method was introduced, able to mimic industrial conditions. The research results and outcomes were validated by manufacturing and analyzing two thin hot stamped components, a demonstrator and a real-life automotive component. Finally, it was demonstrated that hot stamping of thin-walled boron-manganese steel components is feasible if the process chain is optimally designed and the process parameters properly adjusted.