NanoSteel has new high strength, light weight steel and gets GM Ventures Investment

NanoSteel has created a new class of steel that allows automotive engineers and designers to reduce weight through the use of thinner, higher strength gauges while maintaining the structural integrity needed for safety. NanoSteel’s new steel design is an alternative to other light-weighting materials which may cost more, require new investment in parts production and have performance limitations.

“GM Ventures investment in NanoSteel demonstrates its confidence in our company’s potential to achieve widespread impact on the auto industry through our proprietary steel designs,” said Dave Paratore, president and CEO of NanoSteel. “With the support of General Motors’ automotive expertise and technology leadership, we can accelerate the final phases of development of our nano-structured AHSS in the quest to economically lightweight vehicles.”

The new advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) offer exceptional combinations of strength and ductility for automotive structures, with measured strength/elongation performance of 950 MPa/35%, 1200 MPa/30% and 1600 MPa/15% respectively.

The automotive industry has identified a future generation of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) materials for lightweighting vehicles across all lines, with an availability target of 2017-2025 for integration into vehicle structural designs and production. NanoSteel’s new AHSS sheet designs are the first to arrive inside the automotive industry’s desired material target. NanoSteel’s designs belongs to a new class of cold formable steels with combinations of strength and ductility properties outside known material boundaries.

These paradigm changing performance levels are enabled by new discoveries related to the formation of nano-scale microstructures (‘nano-structures’). Previously, sheet steel made of nano-structures was considered too brittle (no elongation) to form the shapes required for automotive parts. In contrast, NanoSteel’s materials are based on newly discovered mechanisms to form nano-structures during production which eliminate the cause of this brittleness.

One of the challenges with currently available AHSS materials is the need to form parts at elevated temperatures—increasing cost and production cycle times. NanoSteel eliminates this extra processing, as the material’s inherent ductility allows the forming of component parts using room temperature metal stamping processes on existing manufacturing equipment, known as cold forming.

Many Other Applications

Concrete delivery line for a uranium mine
* Spent sections in underground uranium mine are encased in concrete
* Slurry abrasion results in replacement of L80 steel pipe every 16 months
* NanoSteel ID clad wear pipe projected to last 17.5 years

Nanosteel extends the life of many key components in mining, oil and gas, cement, marine and power systems

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