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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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What I think of when I see these new thinner steel variants is that they must be a lot more sensitive to rust.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.