Methodology for qualifying the use of green steel in body components: A contribution to the life cycle engineering of steel

The use of materials with low environmental footprint will become more important for global car manufacturers in the future to comply the requirements and achieve the sustainability targets. The vehicle body of an electric vehicle is largely made of different steel grades and its production has a major impact on greenhouse gas emissions within the production stage. Future steel production will include a scrap-based electric arc furnace route. This route produces CO2-reduced steel products. However, these products are dependent on the scrap quality. Due to the high scrap content, impurities or tramp elements can be in the molten steel, reducing the steel end-quality or the properties of the final material and limiting reuse of the steel scrap. Therefore, a methodology is developed to perform an experimental analysis for data collection. Through this methodology, a recovery-process-structure-property correlation can be established and thus the influence of manufacturing-related impurities on the mechanical properties can be investigated. A case study shows initial research results using exemplary steel grades. The concept can examine the possibility of using steel with low carbon footprint to advance the life cycle engineering (LCE) idea in terms of recycling steel scrap and to reduce the environmental impact of body components by using CO2-reduced steel.