Potentials and challenges for novel magnesium applications on passenger vehicles

Driven by lightweight goals and strict emission regulations, magnesium and its alloys have attracted increasing attention in the transportation industry. Up to now, Mg structural casting, such as transmission cases, instrument panels and door inners plays an important role in the lightweight process. Now more and more integrated Mg castings with large size and complex geometry are put into use to meet the increasing lightweight requirement. Additionally, more attention has been paid on wrought Mg alloys, i.e. rolled sheets which can be used as body panels and extrusions, which show potential to be used in crash related areas. The application of new magnesium parts in vehicle structures is still challenging. For high pressure die castings (HPDC), performance differences in the different casting areas have to be considered and porosity can lead to limitations. Generally it is challenging to apply magnesium in crash related areas. While HPDC-parts show limited ductility, wrought alloys show a significant tension-compression asymmetry, which leads to early failure on the compression side in many load cases. DLR has successfully developed a technological approach to apply magnesium in crash related areas in bending load cases, including CAE capability to address the complex material properties in numerical simulation. The presentation will show findings and technological developments from research activities of DLR and will touch new magnesium developments from FAW, including studies on mechanical joining solutions. Further ecological aspects will be discussed, showing life cycle assessment (LCA) results from DLR