Low Density Steels for Forging

In the last years numerous works have been done to try to reduce car weight in order to decrease CO2 emissions. In this line, Low Density Steels can be considered as one alternative in the lightweight approximation strategy [ 1-2] for the automotive industry. Generally, in low density steels, a considerable amount of Aluminum is added in order to reduce the overall steel density, but high Aluminum contents lead to processing drawback, that make it difficult to bring these new/lighter steel grades into the market. In the literature, different low density steel grades can be found but most of them are aimed at structural parts of the car, whereas almost none of them is aimed at forged components. In this research, different compositions of the three families of low density steels (ferritic, duplex and austenitic) were fabricated at low scale in order to try to understand the phenomena taking place in these steels, and try to find the best candidate for getting a low density steel suitable for forging in the upcoming research.