News & Events

On the last 4th of July, the project members celebrated the KickOff meeting of the Crash&Tough project at Manresa (Spain). The meeting was organised by Eurecat, the project coordinator, and had the participation of all the members of the consortium. During the meeting, the coordinator reviewed the project schedule and the main technical and financial aspects. All the project members provided a general introduction to their companies and capabilities and described their main roles in the project. The 8 advanced high strength steel grades to be investigated throughout the project were also decided in this Kick-Off meeting. 

The 4th project review meeting was held on the 13th of June, 2019, at the Luleå University of Technology (Luleå, Sweden). After the review of the project calendar and the current status of the project by the coordinator, the partners showed the progress corresponding to the first year of the project. The research plans for the next 6 months were updated

The 6th General Meeting was organized face-to-face on the 16th of January, 2020 at the ArcelorMittal Maizières Research facilities (Maizières-lès-Metz, France). Project partners presented and discussed their research activities for the last 3 months since the last review meeting (5th General Meeting, 30th of June, 2019, Online meeting). The research plans for the coming months were updated and the preparation of the first reporting period was discussed.

The 8th review meeting of Crash&Tough was celebrated on the 9th of June, 2020, in an online modality. The coordinator reviewed the project progress and the partners presented and discussed the results of their main research activities in the last 3-month period. The comments of the evaluators on the technical report for reporting period 1 and the future work to be done in the coming months were discussed. The main dissemination activities were updated. 

Crash&Tough 10th review meeting was organized online on the 20th of January, 2021. After the review of the project progress, the results of the ongoing tasks were updated. The status of the deliverables to be submitted was discussed and the work plan for the next months was updated. 

The members of the consortium had the opportunity to participate in the online Materials in Car Body Engineering (MCBE) conference on June 9 2021 to disseminate the results of the project. The MCBE is an annual conference organized by the automotive circle (https://www.automotive-circle.com/en/conferences/materials) and it is mainly targeted to an industrial audience. In the conference, Daniele De Caro from CRF and David Frómeta from EUT, presented the work: New modelling approach to 3rd generation high-strength steels for automotive components. The work was focused on the characterization of the three 1180 MPa 3^rd Gen AHSS grades of the project and their industrial implementation on the automotive components studied in WP6. 

As a part of the results dissemination plan of the Crash&Tough project, an online Workshop was organized on the 26^th of January, 2022. The aim of the workshop was to show some of the main results of Crash&Tough and to highlight the importance of current research activities on the development of 3^rd Generation Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS). 

During the event, some of the most important results of the project were shown. The event was moderated by Dr. David Frómeta, project coordinator, who provided an initial introduction to the Workshop and a general overview of the project. The next presentation was in charge of Dr. Johannes Rehrl from voestalpine. During his presentation, Dr. Rehrl gave a general introduction to 3^rd Gen AHSS, including metallurgy and material processing, and described the different steel grades investigated in the project. The next presentation was carried out by Dr. Frómeta, who talked about the importance of measuring fracture toughness in AHSS, explained the essential work of fracture (EWF) methodology and showed EWF results for the steel grades investigated in Crash&Tough. The following presentations, presented by Dr. Matthieu Salib and Dr. Nuria Cuadrado, were focused on different advanced microstructural and micromechanical characterization techniques used in the project. Dr. Salib presented the most relevant findings from Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) investigations. Dr. Cuadrado presented the results of nanoindentation measurements and discussed the influence of hardness distribution on the fracture resistance of 3^rd Gen AHSS. With this presentation, the first part of the workshop ended.

After a short break, the second session started with a presentation of Pascal Dietsch, research engineer at ArcelorMittal, who talked about the crash resistance characterization of AHSS and showed the results of bending impact tests performed in WP3. After that, Dr. Jörgen Kajberg (LTU) and Ricardo Hernández (EUT), presented the damage models developed during the project and their application to crash simulations. The final presentation was in charge of Daniele De Caro from CRF. He gave a brief speech about the key role of 3^rd Gen AHSS in the automotive industry and presented the results of industrial stamping trials with the automotive components studied in WP6.

Link to the full video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTx0a5E3wg&t=2243s

The Crash&Tough project members celebrated the final consortium meeting on the 27th of January, 2022. Due to the COVID pandemic and travelling restrictions, the meeting was celebrated online. During the final meeting, a general overview of the project was provided by the coordinator. The partners presented the main results obtained throughout the project and the main conclusions obtained din each WP were discussed. Preparation of the final project report and further dissemination of the Crash&Tough outcome were also discussed.  

The Crash&Tough project was invited to participate in the RFCS Summit celebrated on the 21-22 March, 2022 in Brussels (Research Fund for Coal and Steel Summit 2022 - Info (b2match.io)). The RFCS Summit was organized for the 20^th anniversary of the Research Fund for Coal and Steel by the European Commission Directorate General RTD and the European Research Executive Agency, with the support of ESTEP, Eurofer and Euracoal. The event took place in hybrid format. The project coordinator, David Frómeta, participated online in the Steel day, on the 21st of March, with a brief presentation showing the project objectives, the most important scientific results and the main industrial and socio-economic impact.

Recording of the Session: 

RFCS Coal & Steel Summit - 21/03 on Vimeo

Crash&Tough Presentation:

https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/12d36d74-0f4a-4e11-bb59-4f5d1413c454/library/fe5293ba-8ec5-45ee-bd02-49d4e4c059c3/details 

The results of the Crash&Tough project have been disseminated at the 6^th International Conference on Steels in Cars and Trucks (SCT 2022), celebrated on June 19^th-23^th in Milan (Italy).

David Frómeta, Researcher of the Metallic and Ceramic Materials Unit of Eurecat and coordinator of Crash&Tough, delivered the presentation “3rd Gen AHSS for high crashworthiness automotive applications” within the framework of the session “3^rd Generation AHSS”.

The presentation showed the main results of the industrial implementation studies performed in the project. The study explored the feasibility of manufacturing crash-relevant automotive components with the three 1180 MPa 3^rd  Gen AHSS grades investigated in the project, a DP1180HD from voestalpine and two 1180MPa Fortiform® steel concepts supplied by ArcelorMittal, a carbide-free bainite (CFB) steel and a Quenching and Partitioning (Q&P) steel. These grades were used to replace a first generation DP780 steel in two automotive prototype components: a side sill reinforcement and a battery pack reinforcement. The work included a complete mechanical characterization of the steel grades, stamping trials in an industrial stamping line and crash resistance tests with the manufactured components. The results demonstrated the suitability of 3rd Generation AHSS to manufacture high-performance automotive components with relatively complex geometries using current production tools and achieving potential weight savings up to 20%. 

David Frómeta, project coordinator and researcher from Eurecat’s Metallic and Ceramic Materials Unit, and Daniele de Caro, Sheet metal group responsible from Centro Richerche Fiat, have delivered a presentation about a new modelling approach to predict edge cracking in Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) at the Materials in Car Body Engineering 2022 conference, hosted by Automotive Circle. The event was celebrated on the 5^th and 6^th of July in Bad Nauheim (Germany).

The presentation, which was part of the dissemination activities of the RFCS project ToughSteel, showed some of the main results obtained in Crash&Tough related to the classification of the fracture performance of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) (for more details see the publication Fracture Resistance of Advanced High-Strength Steel Sheets for Automotive Applications | SpringerLink). The presentation also included some practical examples of how to apply the EWF method to predict edge fractures in real automotive components manufactured with 980 MPa and 1180 MPa AHSS grades. The presented case studies were extracted from the ongoing project CuttingEdge4.0 where, among other predicting and analytical tools, new failure models for edge cracking prediction based on fracture mechanics have been further developed.