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.

Comments

What happens when corrosion eats 0.01in of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:What happens when corrosion eats 0.01in of it?

[ArmoredDragon]

Problem with that is you don't gain the benefit of collisions that are probably less dangerous (less kinetic energy is required for movement) and no fuel savings (again, less kinetic energy.)

Re:What happens when corrosion eats 0.01in of it?

[beelsebob]

Stronger cars are bad - we learned that long ago. What you want is weak (to the point of maximum energy absorption per unit acceleration) cars, and strong survival cells.

Re:What happens when corrosion eats 0.01in of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually, they're saying it's not good to blindly strengthen a vehicle throughout, as that prevents the existing crash structures from working as engineered.

Maintaining the same strength of design is far more important to crash safety with the newer approach of 'ablative' vehicles that purposefully self-shred to dissipate energy, so this new metal will by definition result in lighter cars with thinner material layers in the first iteration or two.

And honestly that's thrilling to me: This means we could very well see cars as light as those from the 80's; at first we'll see SUVs and full-sized vehicles able to lose hundreds of pounds and gain some gas mileage to the point the manufacturers will be forced to re-design things further down the chain until sub-2000-pound vehicles happen regularly again at the cheap end.

- WolfWings, too lazy to login to /. in way too many years.

Re:What happens when corrosion eats 0.01in of it?

[Dereck1701]

Making metal parts extremely corrosion resistant is pretty easy, most manufacturers simply choose to go the cheap way to decrease sales prices and increase profits. While I am sure some manufactures would like for their vehicles to fail more quickly to increase their sales due to what has become known as "planned obsolescence". However hopefully they fear the fallout if their vehicles deteriorate too quickly, I think there was a well known instance in the UK where a manufacturer (Lancia I believe) built a car out of cheap metal that rusted quickly and were forced to buy back many of the cars they sold and their loss of reputation in the UK eventually forced them out of that market.

Lateral aerodynamics

[Dutchmaan]

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.

Re:Lateral aerodynamics

[Rei]

A car's vulnerability to lateral gusts is a combination of not just its mass, but also its cross section and its lateral drag coefficient. Unfortunately the effects of winds not directly aligned forward/backwards are often ignored on cars, which is unfortunate - even ignoring gusts, you can have a very streamlined car whose drag coefficient goes to heck because it starts facing crosswinds. Part of that stream that you're working so hard to keep laminar and attached suddenly plunges off over the edge of your car in an uncontrolled manner and detaches - that's not a good thing, and it doesn't take that strong of winds to happen! It's something that's starting to get increasing attention, and hopefully will even moreso in the future - because a car's vulnerability to gusts and its fuel economy are tied together in the real world, particularly in windy areas. Some well-placed vortex generators over the doors for example could really help with both, maybe a sort of horizontal kammback approach as well.

Re:If it sounds too good to be true...

[Nutria]

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...

Worked with this material

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Worked with this material

[Firethorn]

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.

Not to downplay your area of expertise, but note that you said 'right now'. Right now these pieces have lots of welds on them, but that's because it's the best option with current technology. There are alternative attachment methods. Bolts, screws, epoxy, slots, etc... Each has their own advantages and downsides.

Or they could just have the weld spots be thicker to accept the weld/lowered strength, while the majority of the part/panel is thinner.

Planned Obsolescence

[Irate Engineer]

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.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[mjwx]

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.

You're basically describing European cars. Planned Obselecence is a big thing over there. They want to make sure things last just long enough to ride out the warranty period. Obviously not vital components like the drive train (well at least not intentionally) but things like sound proofing, electric seats and mirrors, heaters and other things that will annoy you when they break.

Japanese manufacturers dont have to worry about that as they get obsolescence built into the law in Japan (Shaken law). In this regard, they want their cars to be highly reliable as they want them to get a good resale price when exported out of Japan after 3- 5 years.

Plus Japanese businesses think for the long term. They know that a reputation for reliability is a huge advantage when it comes to new car sales.

Re:lighter, stronger, cheaper ...

[Tanktalus]

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.

Re:Aka

[Z00L00K]

What I think of when I see these new thinner steel variants is that they must be a lot more sensitive to rust.

Re:Aka

[danbert8]

Thankfully coatings technology is advancing faster than steel technology. Rust isn't nearly the problem in new cars today as it was before every steel component was coated at the factory.