• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.66-73
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• 2022

Partial-hardened hot stamping has been well known to be very effective to absorb more energy in automotive lateral crash. Hardness distribution and dimensional change after partial-hardened hot stamping have been studied to find out effect of thermal deformation of the heated hot stamping die on dimensional accuracy of automotive center pillar. Soft zone of commercial center pillar showed 275~345 in Vickers hardness, indicating bigger non-uniformity which resulted from thermal deformation of heated die. Dimensional changes in soft zone of the commercial center pillar measured by three dimensional scanner were much bigger than that in hard zone. It has been found that hot stamping die compensation considering thermal deformation in soft zone causes a significant decrease in hardness deviation in the soft zone, corresponding to 20 percent of commercial center pillar and subsequently leads to much higher dimensional accuracy.