Light weight in iron, new design, process and material strategies developments of nodular graphite iron in suspension components for the automotive industry

摘要

Light weight design is a challenging scenario for the iron components application where Aluminum with a much lower density (2,7 kg/dm~3) is becoming a major threat on the iron applications (7,1 kg/dm~3), even though aluminum alloys present lower mechanical properties (Rm (A356 + T6) ≤ 290 MPa) than nodular iron (Rm (EN-GJS-400-15) ≤ 400 MPa). When applications are responding to stiffness as key performance, young module is becoming the driver. At this challenging scenario Fagor Ederlan still push new innovation activities on design, process and material development to be applied on several applications due to packaging restrictions or big stresses scenarios, clever solutions in iron still can be applied. FAGOR EDERLAN together with the leading of design and materials group of EDERTEK technology Centre, has developed innovative solutions from the design to the manufacturing .Using topological software design tools, applying latest process simulation for thin walls application and applying latest development on alloyed nodular iron materials, Fagor Ederlan has developed together with an OEM application that reduces the weight 15 % comparing with the old geometry version. Even further, steel stamping components or complex ADI alloy GJS-800-10 with high stress conditions could be substitute by this new design, process and material concept application using the new Si alloyed nodular EN-GJS-600-10.