A Review of the Magnesium Front End Research and Development Project
2010-05-18
Alan Luo of General Motors Global Research and Development Center presented a review of the Magnesium Front End Research and Development project. The three-country collaboration is jointly sponsored by the Natural Resources Canada, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) and the United States Automotive Materials Partnership (a consortium of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors).
The goal of the MFERD project is to develop knowledge base and enabling technologies for automotive magnesium applications using front-end body structures as a test bed. The progress made in Phase I, from 2007 to 2009, were in the following nine task areas: crashworthiness; noise, vibration and harshness (NVH); fatigue and durability; corrosion and surface finishing; extrusion and forming; sheet and forming; high-integrity body casting; joining and assembly; as well as the integrated computational materials engineering (ICME).
Some of the accomplishments include development of super-vacuum die-casting technology – produced the first-in-the-world weldable magnesium die-castings. In addition, fabrication of low-cost continuous cast Mg sheet with comparable mechanical properties and formability. The optimization of extrusion process parameters and process simulation tools was another accomplishment. The demonstration of several Mg and dissimilar metal joining and corrosion protection options – key to automotive applications was also developed. And the creation of significant knowledge base and computational tools in magnesium crashworthiness, NVH, fatigue and ICME.
A key question of the project was, “Why a magnesium front end?” One key aspect of the advanced propulsion technology strategy is that lightweigting will result in very good mileage. However, for the mid-term electrification in cars is important. GM is introducing the Chevy Volt, which will use zero petroleum if you drive only 40 miles per day.
Magnesium based power train applications have been introduced into many auto brands, but light-weighting is still critical and adding additional parts and components such as batteries, body chassis and interior systems can reduce total weight and fuel consumption. MFERD has proven we can replace any part we can get including from critical areas, bringing from the top to the bottom and making the car handle better. This is a synergistic project in the hopes of achieving 50% mass savings of weight in the car. This can include a magnesium body for structural integrity, developing manufacturing processes for magnesium body castings, extrusions and sheet.
The Phase I of the first-of-its-kind Canada-China-USA collaborative project “Magnesium Front End Research and Development” was successfully carried out in 2007 to 2009. The project has brought together a unique team of international scope, from the United States, China and Canada, and has developed some key enabling technologies and knowledge base for automotive magnesium applications.
Such technologies will be demonstrated and validated in a “demo” structure to be designed, built and tested in Phase II (2010-2012). The technologies and knowledge base developed in this project will not only benefit the automotive magnesium applications using front end structure as a test bed, they will also promote primary magnesium production, component manufacturing, fundamental research to advanced computational tools (ICME).
With this on-going project, we now have the confidence to find new applications for magnesium.
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