Bake-Hardening Steel retains a certain amount of solid solution carbon and nitrogen atoms in the steel, and the strength of the steel can be improved by adding strengthening elements such as phosphorus and manganese. After being processed and formed, and baked at a certain temperature, the yield strength of the steel is significantly increased due to age hardening. It is usually used in automotive exterior panels that require higher bake hardening performance.
In bake-hardened steels, in addition to strengthening during cold forming, the strength also needs to be additionally increased by surface bake heating to achieve high strength. Physically, this is based on the principle of controlled carbon aging. One advantage of these steels is that they remain relatively soft when deformed and only gain greater strength during further heat treatment, such as baking.
Bake-Hardening steel is developed from IF steel, and its main basis is the Nb and T contained in this steel; the content is not as high as that in IF steel. This causes BH steel to contain a certain number of interstitial atoms, but these interstitial atoms do not affect its stamping performance, or have little effect. Since BH steel is mainly used in automobile shells, it needs to be spray-painted and baked after stamping. During the baking process, the interstitial atoms will undergo aging reflection at the baking temperature, causing the steel to have a solid solution strengthening process in the final process, and the strength will be improved after forming.
Bake hardening (BH) is widely used in the automotive industry for enhancement of components' yield strength (YS), leading to the improvements in dent and crash resistance.
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