Nickel as an Alternative Automotive Body Materials

The study of thermal, chemical and mechanical properties of pure nickel being an alternative automotive body material is presented in this paper. Current automotive components are mainly used steel as a body material. Due to the increasing demand of high performance and related issues interest moving towards other materials to replace the existing steel. The hardness value of both heat treated and non-heat treated pure nickel does not change after annealing. The hardness values are in the range of 118 to 123 HV. As the annealing temperature increases, the ultimate tensile strength, yield strength and young modulus decreases, which show the ductility increase. The highest ultimate tensile strength of pure nickel at 300ºC annealed temperature is 758.78 MPa. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies confirmed pure nickel of face centered cubic (FCC)with lattice constant measured as 0.3492 nm for unannealed sample, which is increased to 0.3512 for annealed samples. The corrosion rate of both annealed, and non-heat treated pure nickel is in the range of 0.0266 to 0.048 mm/year