Role of Novel Forming Technologies and Materials in Automotive Applications

Over the last 100 years, it has been a full circle for the automotive industry. Electric vehicles which generally dominated the roads till 1920s slowly lost the ground to the gasoline vehicles due to the large-scale discovery of petroleum across the globe. Electric vehicles are now back again, and this time it is going to stay. In this paper, after discussing the roles of the component shape and the functionality integration to the component to reduce the number of parts, and therefore the weight, the importance of novel manufacturing technologies in achieving the desired shape and part reduction is discussed. Further, the global optima in terms of weight and cost reduction while meeting the performance targets can be achieved with the use of novel forming technology. Finally, the novel forming technologies developed at Tata Steel such as the micro-pillar forming, manufacturing of variable thickness tube, electropulse-assisted forming and modified hot stamping technologies have been discussed in detail.