Automotive steel applications
Docol® steel grades serve specific design purposes and are chosen by designers for a wide range of applications and used by OEMs and tier suppliers in millions of vehicles around the world.
Structural body parts
Parts such as sill reinforcements and cross-members must have both high-energy absorption capabilities and low weight. Stiffness can be maintained with optimized shape.
Chassis
High-strength steels provide chassis with excellent formability and fatigue resistance properties.
Bumpers
AHSS steels provide high-force absorption for bumper reinforcements while achieving major weight reduction.
Door beams
The high-strength levels of AHSS steel result in major weight reductions when upgrading side impact beams.
Seating
Car seats provide a critical safety structure for occupants. Advanced high steel steels can be used throughout the seat frame, significantly reducing their weight while meeting or exceeding current safety requirements.
EV battery protection
Electric car batteries are expensive and hazardous if damaged in a crash. They also require underside protection from road debris and an enclosure that contains battery liquids in the event of a collision. Docol AHSS steels can help to ensure the strongest EV battery protection with the lowest possible weight.
Cross members
Cross members can further stiffen the car body, transfer side impact loads, and, in BEVs, protect battery packs. With their high strength, cross members made in AHSS and UHSS steels can increase both crash performance and vehicle responsiveness.
Frame rails
Frame rails, aka subframe rails, for trucks and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) require strength, stiffness, and fatigue resistance: AHSS and UHSS steels provide all that, plus significant lightweighting advantages.
Light commercial vehicles
Light commercial vehicles can optimize designs using AHSS and UHSS steels for lightweighting and strengthening their chassis, structural components and EV battery cages.
Truck cabins
Truck cabin frames need to be light-in-weight, while providing for sustained driver comfort. With innovative designs and highly formable AHSS steels, designers can use complex geometries to increase cabin stiffness – reducing NVH – while also reducing driver blind spots.
AHSS and UHSS applications for heavy trucks
Product program for all our automotive steel grades
New formulations and grades of Docol® high-strength steels enable you to produce vehicles that are stronger, lighter and more energy efficient.
Read more about our steels
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AHSS lightweighting of truck components
For many truckers, lightweighting isn’t so much about fuel efficiency as it is about total cost and freight efficiency: being able to earn higher revenue by hauling more — while staying under the legal weight limits. Some truck components that had been switched from traditional carbon steel to lightweight aluminum, or even carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs), are now good candidates for more economical and durable advanced high strength steels (AHSSs).
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With Docol® steel, Shape Corp. has improved body structure components for cars
The basic shape of the car hasn’t changed much in a century, but a lot of evolution has happened to the body structure. Thanks to advanced high-strength steel grades from SSAB, Shape Corp. has been able to improve the body structure components of vehicles, with increased safety and reduced weight as a result.
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Meet these new hot-rolled Docol® 800MPa steels
To form or stretch cut edges that are crack-free can be a major challenge when working with advanced-high strength steels (AHSS). To reduce the risk of cracked raised edges, SSAB has introduced two new hot-rolled 800 megapascal steels with extremely high edge ductility.