Improved Implementation of Material Behaviour Change due to Bake Hardening in the Simulation of the Process Chain

Abstract The steadily increasing demands on the crash safety of automobiles with simultaneous weight reduction also mean higher requirements for crash simulation. In addition to manufacturability, the focus in component dimensioning is increasingly on crash properties. In order to improve the predictive accuracy of crash simulation, the individual process steps must be coupled in the simulations. To increase the quality of the predictions, thermal treatments such as curing of the paint, which normally takes place at 170 °C for around 20 minutes, should also be taken into account. In many steels, the so-called bake-hardening effect occurs. This leads to an increase in the yield stress. In this publication, different transformation approaches for the hardening curves will be investigated in order to increase the prediction accuracy in the process chain. An example is used to demonstrate their easy applicability in the simulation of the process chain.