Numerical prediction of microstructure in high-strength ductile forging parts

Arthur Back¹, Marcus Urban¹, Christoph Keul², Wolfgang Bleck², Gerhard Hirt¹

¹Institute of Metal Forming (IBF), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. ²Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy (IEHK), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7494/cmms.2010.4.0296

Abstract:

The automotive industry has an ongoing request for lighter, stiffer and at the same time cheaper parts to maintain the economic and technical progress. Especially in case of safety relevant components a combination of high stiffness and sufficient ductility is required. Regarding these demands the main subject of this project was to improve the mechanical properties of forging steel alloys by employing a high-strength and ductile bainitic microstructure while maintaining a cost effective process chain for the high-stressed forged parts. For these purposes a new steel alloy with an optimized process chain has been developed. To reduce the experimental effort for identifying the process parameters and geometries that enable the target microstructure a numerical approach was developed to predict the microstructure of the steel alloy after the process chain. The implemented numerical approach is based on FEM simulations of the forging and cooling combined with deformation-cooling-time-temperature-transformation diagrams.

Cite as:

Back, A., Urban, M., Keul, C., Bleck, W., & Hirt, G. (2010). Numerical prediction of microstructure in high-strength ductile forging parts. Computer Methods in Materials Science, 10(4), 271 – 278. https://doi.org/10.7494/cmms.2010.4.0296

Article (PDF):

Keywords:

Finite element method, Forging, Cooling, Microstructure prediction, Steel alloy development

References: