The usage of high-strength steels for structural components and reinforcement parts is inevitable for modern car-body manufacture in reaching lightweight design as well as increasing passive safety. Depending on their microstructure these steels show differing damage mechanisms and various mechanical properties which cannot be classified comprehensively via classical uniaxial tensile testing. In this research, damage initiation, evolution and final material failure are characterized for commercially produced complex-phase (CP) and dual-phase (DP) steels in a strength range between 600 and 1000 MPa. Based on these investigations CP steels with their homogeneous microstructure are characterized as damage tolerant and hence less edge-crack sensitive than DP steels. As final fracture occurs after a combination of ductile damage evolution and local shear band localization in ferrite grains at a characteristic thickness strain, this strain measure is introduced as a new parameter for local formability. In terms of global formability DP steels display advantages because of their microstructural composition of soft ferrite matrix including hard martensite particles. Combining true uniform elongation as a measure for global formability with the true thickness strain at fracture for local formability the mechanical material response can be assessed on basis of uniaxial tensile testing incorporating all microstructural characteristics on a macroscopic scale. Based on these findings a new classification scheme for the recently developed high-strength multiphase steels with significantly better formability resulting of complex underlying microstructures is introduced. The scheme overcomes the steel designations using microstructural concepts, which provide no information about design and production properties.

High-strength steels show an entirely different material behavior than conventional deep-drawing steels. This fact is caused among others by the multiphase nature of their structure. The Forming Limit Diagram as the classic failure criterion in forming simulation is only partially suitable for this class of steels. An improvement of the failure prediction can be obtained by using damage mechanics. Therefore, an exact knowledge of the material-specific damage is essential for the application of various damage models. In this paper the results of microstructure analysis of a dual-phase steel and a complex-phase steel with a tensile strength of 1000 MPa are shown comparatively at various stress conditions. The objective is to characterize the basic damage mechanisms and based on this to assess the crack sensitivity of both steels. First a structural analysis with regard to non-metallic inclusions, the microstructural morphology, phase identification and the difference in microhardness between the structural phases is carried out. Subsequently, the development of the microstructure at different stress states between uniaxial and biaxial tension is examined. The damage behavior is characterized and quantified by the increase in void density, void size and the quantity of voids. The dominant damage mechanism of the dual-phase steel is the void initiation at phase boundaries, within harder structural phases and at inclusions. In contrast the complex-phase steel shows a significant growth of a smaller amount of voids which initiate only at inclusions. To quantify the damage tolerance and the susceptibility of cracking the criterion of the fracture forming limit line (FFL) is used. The respective statements are supported by results of investigations regarding the edge-crack sensitivity.

Advanced high strength steels are widely used in the automotive industry to simultaneously improve crash performance and reduce the car body weight. A drawback of these multiphase steels is their sensitivity to damage effects and thus the reduction of ductility. For that reason the Forming Limit Curve is only partially suitable for this class of steels. An improvement in failure prediction can be obtained by using damage mechanics. The objective of this paper is to comparatively review the phenomenological damage model GISSMO and the Enhanced Lemaitre Damage Model. GISSMO is combined with three different yield loci, namely von Mises, Hill48 and Barlat2000 to investigate the influence of the choice of the plasticity description on damage modelling. The Enhanced Lemaitre Model is used with Hill48. An inverse parameter identification strategy for a DP1000 based on stress-strain curves and optical strain measurements of shear, uniaxial, notch and (equi-)biaxial tension tests is applied to calibrate the models. A strong dependency of fracture strains on the choice of yield locus can be observed. The identified models are validated on a cross-die cup showing ductile fracture with slight necking.