Tailoring of mechanical properties of a side sill part made of martensitic stainless steel by press hardening

The present work deals with a technological study to integrate the 1.4034 martensitic stainless steel sheet alloy in the conventional press hardening process. Based on preliminary work, side sill demonstrators with tailored mechanical properties were manufactured by press hardening under conventional process parameters. The resulting microstructure and mechanical properties of the produced parts were characterized. The tailoring of the mechanical properties consists of the development of two sections with completely different mechanical properties in a single part. To achieve this, a half of the blank was insulated with a refractory during austenitization treatment. This avoided the heating of the insulated side until the austenitization temperature. Therefore, only the non-insulated side was hardened by quenching. Moreover, depending on the austenitization temperature the resulting mechanical properties can be adjusted.