Manufacturing Crack-resistant Lightweight Components

Cold cracking in high-strength steel presents major quality assurance challenges for the automotive and machine-building industries, since cracks are difficult to predict - until now. A new process can determine, as early as the design stage, if critical conditions for such damage can be prevented. This lowers development times and costs.
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg, in conjunction with the Chair of Joining and Welding Technology LFT at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus (BTU) developed a new process for making cold cracking more predictable. "We are able to compute the probability of cold cracking as early as the design stage of a component, and immediately run through corrective measures as well," explains Frank Schweizer of the IWM. The new approach could markedly reduce such costly methods in the future - and thus lower production costs while shortening development phases. More information can be found here