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Steel Treatment Paves the Way For Radically Lighter, Stronger, Cheaper Cars (gizmag.com)
Zothecula writes: Radically cheaper, quicker and less energy-intensive to produce than regular steel, Flash Bainite is stronger than titanium by weight, and ductile enough to be pressed into shape while cold without thinning or cracking. It's now being tested by three of the world's five largest car manufacturers, who are finding they can produce thinner structural car components that are between 30-50 percent lighter and cheaper than the steel they've been using, while maintaining the same performance is crash tests. Grain of salt: the positive claims here are mostly coming from the company responsible for the process.
Rearden metal
When new, this may perform great. But I guess rust will eat it like any other steel plate. And then it becomes quite important what thickness you started with.
Vajk
While light is wonderful for fuel efficiency, I'm finding that with each new generation of car I drive, strong lateral gusts of wind tend to pose more of a problem while driving. This is purely conjecture of course, but I just don't remember having these troubles in the past, where it's harder to immediately compensate for a sudden strong gust of wind that can literally alter your cars course in an instant.
Probably. But the US ARMAMENT RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ENGINEERING CENTER did an evaluation of the process and gave it positive -- but not perfect -- marks in 2011.
http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If it isn't corrosion resistant and brings a cars life expectancy down, it will be a big issue in the car industry. But look to bikes and industrial assembly lines for positive impact.
I did some graduate work with this company (I'm a Welding Engineer) and it is indeed interesting, but I realllllly wish they would stop calling it Flash Bainite. There is 0% bainite structure in the material, it can only form with slower heating/cooling rates. Call it "flashite" or something else. The problem with the material is as soon as you heat the material back up you lose all of the bonus properties. Right now all of the panels/pieces that automotive would look to replace with this have lots of spot/mig welds on them, so those areas would be much weaker after the fastening work was done.
feeling in our wallets?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
This is a fight by big steel to try to stop the conversion to aluminum based parts, because its cheaper.
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Aren't cows carbon neutral, though? Since they are not producing carbon through gastro-fusion, all the carbon they fart and belch must first be ingested in the form of plants which obtained their carbon by extracting it from the atmosphere.
Earlier reports came out in 2011
http://www.gizmag.com/stronger...
Claims less energy inputs, less expensive equipment to make and shape and stronger results.
If the money savings and benefits are there I would have expected it to have been scooped up and monetized by now. Unless there are real IP issues preventing it from getting accepted.
How many others mis-read this as promising a steel pavement, and thus levitating vehicles.
There is a patent application from 2008:
But then there is a .mil evaluation:
Most of the recent advances in metallurgy are coming from amorphous solids. Normally metals form crystalline grains. I know, it's weird to think of metals as crystals, but if you slice them and look at them under a microscope, they're grains of metal crystals of uniform atomic arrangement. These grains give metals a lot of their characteristics. For instance, work tempering (metal getting harder and more brittle the more you bend it) comes from these grains sliding against each other with each bend, until the edges and corners of the grains catch against each other and won't slide anymore. The size, shape, arrangement, and atomic composition of these crystals is what gives each metal and its heat treatment its unique characteristics.
An amorphous solid is cooled from a liquid to a solid so quickly it doesn't have time to form crystalline structures. This gives the material different characteristics from its crystalline form, some better, some worse. From the name, "Flash Bainite," I'm guessing forming this stuff involves rapid cooling of the steel in a controlled manner to produce just the right combination of crystalline structure mixed with amorphous steel to yield the higher strength associated with amorphous solids, without the extreme flexibility and lack of ductility (won't stay in the new shape). This ability to rapidly cool materials in a precise and controlled manner has been a recent development due to advances in computer control. In the theoretical sense, it is easy. But actually doing it in practice on an industrial scale has been very difficult until recently.
You're right of course, but the concern is over the methane they produce, not carbon dioxide. methane is hundreds of times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Before the days of unibody construction, usually the lifespan of a car was dictated by how long it took for the frame to rot, up here in New England anyway. I had a series of Subarus through the 1980s and 1990s that had perfectly running powertrains, but I had to retire them when the frames rotted away. If I got 150k miles out of them I was lucky.
Now I've had a few cars (an Impreza and a Honda Civic) with unibody construction, and now they seem to be limited by powertrain. The Impreza made it to 250k miles before the rings went, followed by the transmission. The Civic is still rolling nicely and passing emissions inspections at 300k miles, though I did have to replace the head gasket last summer.
I suspect the manufacturers are realizing that quality cars == low turnover == infrequent return customers. They'd love to make the automotive equivalent of a "One Hoss-Shay" that self-destructs after 100k miles as you drive past the dealership.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
...might turn an advanced material vehicle into a Coors can on wheels. Some high strength steels are notoriously susceptible to corrosion, welding and/or post-impact problems.
Unwelded, single piece objects with any necessary protective coatings, or in single use applications, are rapid to develop. We can be excited and apprehensive about these type of advances.
Right. Because all the manufacturers are colluding for higher prices, and won't try to compete with each other on improved price. All it takes is one of the big manufacturers to see an edge, and prices will drop. You won't see it from the #1 brand, most likely, but the #2 or #3 brand will see it as an opportunity to improve marketshare, and then the rest will have to keep up.
But they produce methane from plant matter, thus indirectly turning CO2 into more harmful methane.
Maybe not going to happen in the land of lawyers for quite awhile, but it would be great if some company in the world could start using and testing in real cars.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
If we could genetically modify cows to fart helium 3 instead of methane, we could use their gas to power fusion reactors.
You are welcome on my lawn.
cow poster :
http://www.healthstones.com/fa...
aaaaaaa
Q&A . . . Lots of great input, thank you. Hope the answers help.
1) The reason there is not more hype is pretty simple.
"Big Steel" emailed we can't even attend their public events because "Flash Bainite competes with their products" made in their $400M furnaces.
Big Steel and their Academic friends are dug in pretty deep to protect marketspace and profits.
We'd like to work with Big Steel when they're ready but for now favorable licensing is available to others in the supply chain.
2) As for corrosion, Flash 1600 has already passed the 400 hour salt spray test. Paint/bake and chrome plating work well too.
E-galvanizing is already used by OEMs so Flash will start in hidden structural parts (not Class A visible) so rust would have to get through other parts first.
3) The reason 7% stronger Flash can make parts 30-50% lighter is that Flash Bainite can be formed/bent into complex shapes at vastly higher strengths than other advanced high strength steels.
Flash's extra 7% strength for a given alloy is just a bonus. The US Army did 5mm thick Charpy tests and found no catastrophic ductile to brittle transition down to -40 degrees.
There's also energy absorption results on tubing that an OEM allowed to be presented a few years ago at Cambridge Univ which outperformed five leading vehicles' door beams by 15-20% at the same mass.
4) Stress Corrosion can happen in all AHSS but the Steel Industry and Auto OEMs know how to handle this.
SCC can happen when hydrogen migrates on the grain boundary surface area. AHSS is highly grain refined thus lots of total surface area.
Flash Bainite has notably larger grains so there is expected to be less SCC with much less boundary surface area for hydrogen to move on.
5) I completely disagree that Flash is brittle.
Aside from the testing at Auto OEMs withheld due to NDAs, look at the cover photo of the Crush Can at 48 Rockwell C and see how the Flash folded.
I am unaware of any other material at 48Rc that can fold to absorb energy without shattering.
6) I don't think Flash in a car is decades away with 2025's 54mpg fast approaching.
Three very large OEMs are asking for coils of steel asap and one is about ready for running changes.
While we are focusing on a modest production capacity in-house, we are very open to licensing Flash to others to meet the Auto needs . . .
And every other Industry looking for lighter, stronger, safer, less costly, readily weldable metal.
GaryCola 12th December, 2015 @ 9:43 p.m. (California Time)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You failed your deformables class in college, didn't you?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Eating meat is about the most destructive thing we do to the environment by far
I hadn't heard this one before. I guess we all had better stick to alfalfa sprouts and organic broccoli.
Tell me, in that perfect green world, is fish permissible?
Or maybe the best thing would be for everyone to just die off and restore the balance?
this is actually about fuel efficiency, not production cost. I'd bet it would cost (quite a bit) more given what a hard sell the manufacturer is making.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sounds like Hank Rearden's innovative alloy from Ayn Rand's ponderous tome. All the other steel foundries, with the government firmly in their pocket and seeing their monopolies threatened, gang up on Rearden to discredit his new metal as dangerous. In the movie, the government agent negotiating with Hank to buy the rights to the alloy (in return for not confiscating it), was played by Armin Shimmerman. While watching him I imagined that he would pop out and say "Our government is willing to pay a substantial amount..... the sum of one million bars of gold-pressed latinum!!" The Part 1 movie I thought was a pretty reasonable effort at making a decent film on a low budget, Part 2 was fairly poor and Part 3 a cinematic travesty.
Eating meat is about the most destructive thing we do to the environment by far
I hadn't heard this one before. I guess we all had better stick to alfalfa sprouts and organic broccoli.
Tell me, in that perfect green world, is fish permissible?
Or maybe the best thing would be for everyone to just die off and restore the balance?
If a basic trait that humans have evolved to have is destructive to the environment, then the problem doesn't lie with eating meat.
Too many people is the problem. We are no more evil for eating meat than any other predator.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Cows eat grass if they are raised properly. They are carbon neutral.
I don't know why people don't eat lamb much in the USA. It's a far far superior meat.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I have been hearing about this Flash Bainite for years now. This news is too old and was covered in Gizmag many years ago (http://www.gizmag.com/stronger-steel-in-a-flash/18882/).
Fish is never an alternative to a good beef.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Can I install your wife on my Android phone?
What kind of structural engineer are you who don't seem to know the difference between strength and stiffness?
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
Metal used for car's body costs about 1500$ per small car (e.g. Fiesta).
They are already quite good, lasting well over 10 years without any corrosion whatsoever. (zin coating etc)
Replacing it with stainless steel would increase costs 5 fold => 7500$ per car body.
Not viable.
And to "increase profit"... Many manufacturers are struggling to barely make it even.
Only luxury cars have good margins.
They do roll alarmingly - the suspension is soft - but I'm told the centre of gravity is quite low so it's actually hard to turn one over. I thought better of performing an experiment, but it seems plausible as it's a ladder chassis construction & the shell weighs bugger all because it's made of kitchen foil.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have owned cars made with large amounts of aluminum. Aluminum cars are very expensive to repair after accidents. I wonder how this metal will compare with Aluminum. If I could have a lightweight, inexpensive to repair car it would be great: less expensive to drive and to insure. This technology won't displace carbon fiber in Lamborghinis, but how about Aluminum in Audis, Fords and Teslas? How about Boeing and AirBus? Could this replace a lot of aluminum?
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Strength of metal is generally regarded as ultimate tensile strength (or other similar measures), whereas modulus of elasticity is a measure of inverse stretchiness. Nonetheless, your point stands: titanium is weaker than most mild steels, and less than 1/10th the strength of high strength steels.
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Nobody wants to be seen as a sheep farmer in the USA. They're all too macho for that.
No sig today...
The steel is similar to a maraging steel, but much easier and cheaper to produce. Instead of eliminating carbon and adding other alloying elements to form intermetallics like in maraging steel, they keep the carbon trapped as carbide particles for long enough to complete the heat treatment. Therefore only little alloying required. Nice! As already mentioned, the weakened welds limit the use of this material. Re-doing the heat treatment is not an option because the process relies on ultra-fast heating and cooling. Perhaps point welding is fast enough to keep sufficient strength?
With a barrel of salt, or better an oceanful. In a year or so, it'll reappear as one of those inventions "they" don't want you to know about.
"Other predators" don't have knowledge, education or communication.
All life is precious, every single bit of living matter in the universe, from Single cell organisms, to plants to animals. Do not be so smug and condescending that you think that because you are not eating things with faces that you are not killing life forms.
It is the ultimate moral bankruptcy of vegans to assume they are somehow practicing moral superiority by saying "I only kill and eat plants". You are every bit the killer that those you detest are. You are a killer. Things die in order for you to live.
And it will remain that way until we become chemoautotrophs. I mean, you could go on a breatharian diet, but that tends to remove you from the gene pool.
You even take the completely ridiculous assertion that other animals do not have knowledge , education, or communication - so it is okay for them. Is it? Why cannot those of the moral high ground make certain that frank carnivores stop thier parctices, that animal they kill is just as dead as if a human killed it. Take a frank carnivore, and in making them an intelligent vegan, oinly feed them those foods oyu think are acceptable to kill. See how that works out for them. They will die, no matter how you rationalize it, they are designed to eat meat. It does not make them evil, and if you try to force them to eat only veggies, you will have killed them despite your assumed moral high ground. And humans are omnivores, no matter what you think. There is no logical way out for you.
Since all life is precious, and since all creatures except chemoautotrophs can only survive by killing other life forms, We simply must accept that it is how we survive. So go forth and kill something to eat today, and be grateful for it, as it allows you to survive..
Or eat a rock, whichever you wish.
Ex short term vegan here. Impossible for my metabolism to handle, and the other vegans were impossible to be around. So now I eat as humans were designed to eat. My digestive tract works correctly, and I go to no strange and unnatural lengths for my nutrition.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Calling this Bainite is confusing, as the time/temperature charts show that you only really get bainite when you hold at above 400C after quenching from above critical temperatures -- which does not match the described process. I suspect it's not really bainite, but some sort of martensite/ferrite/pearlite mix. When making knives with a bainite structure, the resulting blades, usually from a high carbon tool steel such as L6, are very springy, and do not exhibit plastic deformation before breaking (i.e. they do not take a set when bent, and tend to break before taking a set unless taken to an extreme or heavily tempered). That said, it sounds like a great step forward for sheet metal working.
Superior to what? Rat meat?
Superior to what? Rat meat?
Superior to Beef, Buffalo, Chicken, Pork, Veal, Venison and Moose.
It's not superior to snails though.
I haven't tried rat meat. I doesn't sound appetizing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Fish is never an alternative to a good beef.
... Except on Friday!
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