Competing with Composites

摘要

Needless to say, the steel industry isn't content to sit by and watch new materials erode their market. They are working hard to come up with new and better steel all the time to fend off the increasing competition from composites and aluminum. And for manufacturers like the auto industry, steel has the appeal of the familiar. "The auto industry is really trying to squeeze as much as they can out of steel auto bodies," says Regu Ramoo, vice president of engineering at Altair Engineering. "The Acura 2007 MDX, for example, has seven different grades of high-strength steel in the body." And what, exactly, is high-strength steel? You can categorize steel broadly into three grades: everyday mild steel, high-strength steel, and ultra-high-strength steel. These categories, and the divisions between them, are somewhat arbitrary: Definitions change over time, and may vary depending on your source.