Advanced High Strength Steel Development

Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed an in-house capability to examine the effects of alloying and thermomechanical processing—including primary processing, heat-treatment, rolling, and forming—on advanced high strength steel (AHSS) microstructure, properties, and their resulting performance. This capability includes subject matter expertise in third-generation AHSS development, along with experience in tailoring microstructures to achieve application-specific property targets. LANL also offers comprehensive experimental, processing, characterization, and modeling facilities that already are applied to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office Program, “Quenching and Partitioning Process Development to Replace Hot Stamping of High-Strength Automotive Steel,” as part of a collaboration with university and industry partners.

Capability Bounds

AHSS processing currently is limited to pilot-scale studies.

Unique Aspects

AHSS subject matter expertise is collocated with experimental and modeling facilities—a unique feature within the DOE laboratory complex.

Availability

Some facilities may have access requirements for outside users, while most are generally available.

References

• A.J. Clarke, M.K. Miller, R.D. Field, D.R. Coughlin, P.J. Gibbs, K.D. Clarke, D.J. Alexander, K.A. Powers, P.A. Papin, G. Krauss, “Atomic and Nanoscale Chemical and Structural Changes in Quench and Tempered 4340 Steel”, Acta Materialia, Vol. 77, May 2014, pp. 17-27.
• J.G. Speer, E. De Moor, A.J. Clarke. “Critical assessment 7: quenching and partitioning”, Materials Science and Technology 2015, 31(1): 3-9.
• K.D. Clarke, C.J. Van Tyne, S-J. Lee, “Correlation between crystal structure change and transformation strain for multiphase transformations”, JOM (2015) DOI:10.1007/s11837-015-1670-7.