Automotive components weight reduction using high strength third generation steels to improve sustainability and reduce the carbon footprint

The automotive sector is a highly competitive and complicated field, in which several Original Equipment Manufacturers are challenging to anticipate the customer needs to make products that are complicated. In fact, several thousand components are needed to manufacture a car, which must respect and pass all the tests needed to guarantee the safety, the comfort of the occupants and the environmental aspects. The sustainability and the reduction of CO2 emissions have the major impact on the automotive industry. They are leading to the development of new technologies, new business models as the circular economy, and new ways of thinking about transportation. The scope of this research is to study a new family of steel sheet, the Quenching and Partitioning 1180, evaluating its possible impact in terms of carbon footprint, circular economy and costs for applications on automotive components. The activity done are: • Scout the different steel mills, to find the ones able to produce such a kind of material. • Perform the chemical and physical characterization of available products, evaluating the compatibility with automotive processes (welding, assembly-bonding and painting). • Select of an automotive case study component, the Maserati windshield reinforcement, and on that, to evaluate the sustainability of the production and manufacturing processes, performing a Life Cycle Assessment, comparing different kind of steels and processes to find the less impacting from an environmental point of view. • Evaluation of the economic impacts of the Quenching and Partitioning 1180 steel application in the case study component, compared to other possible steel solutions.