The Magnesium Front End Research and Development (MFERD) Project is an international effort jointly sponsored by the Natural Resources Canada, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) and the United States Automotive Materials Partnership (a consortium of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors). The goal of the MFERD project is to develop knowledge base and enabling technologies for automotive magnesium applications using front end body structures as a test bed. This report summarizes the progress made in Phase I (2007 to 2009) in the following nine task areas: crashworthiness; noise, vibration and harshness (NVH); fatigue and durability; corrosion and surface finishing; extrusion and forming; sheet and forming; high-integrity body casting; joining and assembly; as well as the integrated computational materials engineering (ICME). Some of the accomplishments include: (a) development of super-vacuum die casting technology - produced the first-in-the-world weldable magnesium die castings; (b) fabrication of low-cost continuous cast Mg sheet with comparable mechanical properties and formability; (c) optimization of extrusion process parameters and process simulation tools; (d) demonstration of several Mg and dissimilar metal joining and corrosion protection options - key to automotive applications; and (e) creation of significant knowledge base and computational tools in magnesium crashworthiness, NVH, fatigue and ICME.
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