Nearly 17 years ago, WorldAutoSteel began the first compilation of the Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) Application Guidelines, a volume of global best practices for forming and joining what was then a relatively new family of steels. We’ve continued to update the data and information housed in the Guidelines, recognizing the fast-paced development of AHSS products. We’re excited to inform you that we’re ramping up for another update, to be fully completed by 2021.
Vehicle applications of Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) will continue to proliferate at automotive OEM and supplier plants as they address the challenge to achieve lighter, safer and affordable structures. And this effort now includes the additional challenges of battery protection and range improvements. The steel industry continues to meet those challenges by re-inventing steel products to be stronger, and therefore lighter, with increased forming characteristics. Consequently, we are now seeing 3rd Gen Steels becoming commercially available and automakers achieving improved safety, light-weighting and environmental performance with them.
This requires everyone in the business of making automotive structures to master the fundamentals in record time and quickly get up to speed on specific application knowledge to keep pace with process improvements that are being realized out in the field.
And that’s exactly what the AHSS Application Guidelines is meant to capture, to assist automotive designers, engineers and press shop personnel in applying these steels to vehicle manufacturing.
Our Process
AHSS Application Guidelines Technical Team
Forming experts Dr. Daniel Schaeffler, Engineering Quality Solutions, Inc., and George Coates, The Phoenix Group, with well-known joining expert, Menachem Kimchi, M.Sc., Material Science Engineering, Ohio State University, will spend the next year and a half interacting with our membership around the world to tap their expertise for new and best practices. Our membership includes steel industry subject matter experts who collaborate regularly with global automotive manufacturers.
Additionally, we welcome best practices and lessons learned from suppliers and academicians who wish to contribute. These interactions lead to significant feedback and information, which is then captured and documented in the AHSS Application Guidelines.
In the meantime, the AHSS Application Guidelines V6.0 will remain available free for download from our website here until the new version is complete.
A New Format Coming with this Update!
Up until now, the Guidelines have been in a PDF volume, which if you’ve downloaded it, you know what a large and daunting volume it is. This next update will bring the Guidelines into an online database that can be browsed and searched. This new online format will help you find the information for which you specifically are looking, and therefore, make it more easily available wherever in the world you may be. The best part of this online format is that we do not have to wait until the entire update is complete to begin making content available, and therefore, we’ll be able to release it in phases over the next year and a half.
It will be housed at our current blog site, ahssinsights.org, which will be redesigned to accommodate it. It will automatically integrate current and future Blog articles in searches so that, through our many expert contributors, the Guidelines will be continuously updated to reflect fresh content. Regardless of the format, the AHSS Application Guidelines will always be available free of charge.
Stay Informed!
We’ll keep you posted at ahssinsights.org and via our email blasts as information is released. If you are not subscribed to the AHSS Insights Blog, please take a moment to Subscribe. You also may wish to subscribe to WorldAutoSteel’s enews to make sure you don’t miss any important information. Our firm commitment: we never pepper your inbox with unnecessary information.