Thermomechanical Treatment of Martensitic Stainless Steels Sheets and Its Effects on Their Deep Drawability and Resulting Hardness in Press Hardening

The deep drawability of three Martensitic Stainless Steels (MSS) alloys under conventional press hardening thermomechanical process conditions was investigated. The three alloys differ in the content of the main elements C and Cr. Firstly, the metallurgical properties of the alloys were determined, i.e., the phase mass fraction diagrams and the concentration of alloying elements in solid solution at the austenitic temperatures with help of the JMatPro® software version 7.0. Derived from this analysis, specific thermomechanical process parameters were defined to evaluate experimentally and numerically the hot sheet formability of the alloys during the deep drawing process. The hot deep drawability of the MSS alloys was experimentally assessed. The hot deep drawability was evaluated with the resulting maximum drawing depth values. In general, all three alloys developed very good formability at forming temperatures between 700 and 900 °C. However, they are susceptible to chemical composition, austenization temperature, dwell time, and flange gap. The hot formability behavior of the alloys as well as the resulting hardness showed very good concordance with the calculated metallurgical values. Finally, a numerical analysis was conducted using Simufact Forming® 15.0 software. The interval time during hot blank transfer to the tool determines the initial and final forming temperature. The effect of the time interval on the forming temperature was analyzed numerically and validated experimentally. It was also possible to determine the maximum level of plastic strain in the deep drawn cup.