Abstract
An important challenging issue in the automotive industry is the light-weight, safe design and enhancement of crash response of an auto-body structures. These objectives lead to increasing adoption of high strength steel sheet for inner and outer auto-body members. This paper evaluates the dynamic tensile characteristics of high strength steel sheets, HS45R, TRIP60, DP60 and DP100, along the rolling direction and transverse direction. Static tensile tests were carried out at the strain rate of 0.003/sec using the static tensile machine (Instron 5583). Dynamic tensile tests were carried out at the range of strain rate from 0.1/sec to 200/sec using a high speed material testing machine developed. The tensile tests acquire stress-strain relation and strain rate sensitivity of each material. The experimental results show two important aspects for high strength steels: the flow stress increases as strain rate increases; the strain hardening decreases as the tensile stress increases. The experiments also produce interesting results that the elongation does not decrease even when the strain rate increases.