The improvement of the passive safety plays an important role in the development of new steels for automotive parts. At the same time aspects of weight reduction as well as the industrial feasibility have to be considered. Powered by these objectives, the development and application of new steel concepts for various purposes is promoted. For the present investigation especially weight reduction combined with an improvement of the passive safety are emphasised. As example one representative part of the body structure, the crash box, is considered. At the moment different steel grades (dual phase-, TRIP-and HSLA-steels) as well as fibre reinforced materials are applied. New materials for this special purpose have to exhibit outstanding formability, a high capacity to absorb energy during a possible crash and should be cost effective compared to already existing material concepts. During this project different grades of austenitic stainless steels with varying stability were compared to duplex stainless steels and a TRIP grade with regard to their possible application as crash-box material. The austenitic grades show excellent gradual formability according to their strength level. All of them exhibit an extraordinary strain hardening behaviour. The duplex grades show a lower formability but on a much higher yield level. Besides the determination of classical material data such as uni-and multi-axial flow curves, dynamic tensile tests and forming tests for the determination of forming limit curves were performed. The material data were used in the simulation of a drop tower test which is commonly used to evaluate the performance of different materials in car components. The results were then evaluated with regard to the absorbed energy, the folding behaviour and the resulting forces.

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