Customer service
Objectives
- To support and facilitate the introduction of our product in different fields (rheology, tribology, forming, cutting, spot welding and crash behaviour) by the development and improvement of service
- To develop and improve material testing and simulation
- To obtain customer homologation of the products
To transmit technical data transmission to our customers (database development, e-rheol internet portal, high strength steels handbook)
Rheology and stamping process simulation
- To connect the behaviour laws and the stamping capacity of steels
- To predict the mechanical characteristics according the various strain paths
- To adapt the characteristics of steels to their utilisation
Forming techniques studied in this cluster
- Blanking: classical technique but facing new challenges (ultra high strength steels, tool wear, process improvement)
- Stamping: traditional technique but facing new challenges (simulation, very high-strength steels, springback, hot stamping etc.)
R&D activities in the field of metal forming
- Ensure the formability of our new products
- Provide technological data on our products to the clients
- Formability tested in standard experiments (uniaxial test, LDH, cup drawing, friction tests, bending, U shape spring back etc.)
- Full characterisation of the product up to the client homologation (flow curves, Forming Limit Diagram, database)
- Constitutive laws and friction laws for Finite Element simulation
Crash behaviour
- To study the impact resistance: test-samples of laboratory, real parts
- To study the strain rate sensitivity of steel grades
- FEM validation of dynamic constitutive laws
- Influence of the forming process and assembly on crash behaviour
- Damage on base material and spot weld fracture prediction on crash samples
Spot welding
- Taking into account the welding properties from the first stage of the new product development until the customers homologation
- Ensuring the welding of new products in production plants
- Developing new methods and modelling to characterise and foresee the welding properties of steel grades