Enhancement of strength characteristics of a vehicle part using laser hardening technique

In automotive industry; technological trends, innovations and vehicle weight reduction studies are accelerated day by day for CO2 emission reduction. Besides the design changes on the products, the use of new generation high strength steel sheet materials becomes mandatory in order to minimize the thickness. The costs of high strength steel sheet materials are higher than traditional sheet steel materials. At the same time, increasing the strength often causes to make formability difficult. For this reason, automotive manufacturers and suppliers develop different solution proposals to be more competitive in the sector and to increase part formability. In the scope of this thesis, laser hardening, which is one of the alternative solutions to the use of high-strength sheet metal, has been taken place. Accordingly, an automotive passive safety system product and a suspension part's strength properties have been improved via laser hardening technique. In addition, optimization studies of the parameters used in the laser hardening process have been carried out using the Taguchi experimental design and the Response Surface method.