Hot Stamping of Complex-Shaped High-Strength Aluminum Components

Aluminum alloy components are important contribution to lightweight transportations for improving energy efficiency. However, formability of aluminum alloys at room temperature often hinders their further applications in the automotive, rail, or aerospace industries. The solution heat treatment, forming, and in-die quenching (HFQ®) process is an advanced forming technology that performs both forming and heat treatment simultaneously in a single operation. Since its inception, a significant amount of research has been made on the process to develop it further and to assess the feasibility of using it to form components with increasingly complicated geometries, from a growing variety of alloys. This entry summarizes the HFQ® research work, with the emphasis on the development, modeling, and applications of the technology for stamping complex-shaped high-strength aluminum panel components.