A new generation of economical automotive steel

Abstract

To meet the demands of the auto industry, facilitate import substitution, and improve the global competitiveness of Russian products, there is a pressing need for new high-quality economical steels with excellent stamping properties, strength, and corrosion resistance. Between 2001 and 2011, intensive research permitted the development of high-technology production processes for a new generation of automotive steels; these technologies have no counterparts around the world. A fundamentally new approach was adopted: the required structure and properties of the metal are obtained by regulating the deposition of nonmetallic excess phases, the state of the solid solution, the grain boundaries, and the types of impurities at all stages of production. On the basis of extensive research, including more than 1000 trial melts, production technologies for more than 30 grades of automotive steel that match—and in many respects outperform— their foreign counterparts have been introduced at OAO MMK and OAO Severstal’.