Roger Heimbuch remembers a time when he could identify every grade of steel on every square inch of any car he saw on a street.

That was 10 years ago. Today, Heimbuch is still immersed in steel as the director of the Auto/Steel Partnership, an organization dedicated to developing and using advanced steels on cars and trucks. But what's changed is that new materials, such as advanced high-strength steels (AHSS), are appearing in more and more places -- at a more rapid pace than ever before.

New materials, from advanced high-strength steel, to nickel-based alloys, to carbon fibers and triple nickel titanium, are finding ways into new applications, offering combinations of properties and cost advantages once previously believed to be impossible.

The body structure of a vehicle designed by The Auto/Steel Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles uses advanced light weight steel to create more fuel efficient cars.

"In the last five to 10 years, the patent office has been largely overwhelmed with the number of patent applications," says Manish Mehta, executive director of industry forums at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS). "I heard half a million applications are waiting to be looked at, which is just ridiculous."

Perhaps the single most dominant trend in new materials, says Jon Riley, executive director, design & engineering programs at NCMS, is more materials are being tailored in development to very specific end-use applications through simulation software.

"If you look at it like an equalizer on a stereo, you have all these little levers that go up and down," says Riley. "Well, in material development you have 1,001 material properties and processing parameters that you can simulate. One lever goes up and another goes down, and you try to meet requirements in minimum material density and at the lowest material processing cost."

In advanced high-strength steel, which is appearing more frequently in cars today, there are islands of martensite in a matrix of ferrite.

Take, for example, AHSS, which the automotive industry turned to in addressing consumers' concerns over rising fuel prices, environmental issues, and safety. As AHSS has appeared in greater frequency, research firm Ducker Worldwide estimates that the average weight of 2009 model year light vehicles has decreased by 163 pounds since 2007. Honda light vehicles use close to 600 pounds of AHSS per car in 2010 models.

"In the 1980s, we used mild steels with zinc coatings to prevent corrosion, and in the 1990s we started to develop high-strength, low-alloy steels," says Dave Anderson, director of the Automotive Applications Council for the American Iron and Steel Institute. "But what we like about AHSS is that you can form that easily because of the soft ferrite phase, but it gives you strength and stiffness because of the martensite. You get both good formality, but also strength."

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