Abstract
This study discusses contact heating of blanks as a time- and cost-saving alternative to conventional heating in radiation furnaces for press hardening of high-strength car body elements. Different from radiation furnaces, where the process takes up to 10 min, contact heating allows to austenitize the material within seconds. Various experimental series were carried out to investigate the influence of short austenitization on the microstructure and resulting mechanical properties after subsequent press hardening. Attention was given to the individual effects on the relevant processing parameters of the production chain “contact heating – press hardening”. Those include thickness and initial state of the material, cooling rate as well as the presence of post-treatment (cathodic dip coating). The obtained results were compared both to the conventionally austenitized and press-hardened material as well as to the requirements of the industrial standard. Finally, the feasibility of the process was proven by considering the example of press hardening of a door impact beam.
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