The course covers the materials which are used in the automotive industry for the car-body, the chassis and the powertrain, with special focus on those components that have the greatest influence on the car weight and on its lifetime carbon footprint and sustainability Within this scope, the course intends to provide a more advanced and complementary knowledge, with respect to the basic knowledge offered by the B.Sc. level courses of the Italian Universities. The course especially emphasizes the understanding of the interdependency between the choice of the material, the design of its production cycle (including thermal and mechanical treatments), the material structure and microstructure and its evolution during the production cycle, and the final service properties and sustainability.

The student is expected to know and understand the main classes of materials used for car-body, chassis and powertrain parts, their main fabrication and processing routes, their more relevant mechanical, thermal, and electromagnetic properties, and their sustainability and environmental impact.

The teaching does not require any specific prior course at the M.Sc. level, but it requires a general knowledge of physics, chemistry, structural mechanics, and materials science at the B.Sc. level.

Steel fundamentals - Fundamentals of steelmaking, including main production routes, continuous casting, hot and cold rolling. - Sustainable steelmaking, including emission reduction in the blast-furnace route, hydrogen steelmaking, and scrap-tolerant steel grades. - Fundamentals of steel metallurgy, including phases and phase equilibria, phase transformations, heat treatments, and effects of alloy elements. Sheet steels used for car-body and chassis parts - Processing and properties of mild and HSLA steels. - Formability requirements, processing and properties of deep-drawing steels. - Processing and properties of high-strength steels, including dual phase, TRIP, quenching and partitioning, martensitic and hot-stamping steels. - Zinc coating for corrosion protection. Wrought aluminum alloys used for car-body and chassis parts: - Fundamentals of wrought aluminum metallurgy: main production routes, heat treatments, and effects of alloy elements. - Sustainable aluminum production, including main sources of carbon emissions and scrap-tolerant aluminum alloys. - Processing and properties of 5000 series, 6000 series and 7000 series alloys. Other car-body materials - wrought magnesium alloys - glass-fiber reinforced composites Weldability and welding - Weldability of steels. - Overview of welding technologies used in car-making. - Resistance spot welding of steels and aluminum alloys. Steels used for mechanical power transmission - Processing and properties of high-strength, quenched and tempered steels. - Non-martensitic strenghtening of medium-carbon steels. Surface treatments for powertrain components - Induction hardening, carburizing, and nitriding - other surface treatments Materials for internal combustion engines - Cast iron. - Cast aluminum-silicon alloys. - Wrought aluminum alloys for heat exchangers. Materials for electric powertrains: - Fundamentals of ferromagnetism. - Soft magnetic materials: commercially pure iron, iron-silicon electrical steels. - Hard magnetic materials: hard magnetic steels, ferrites, Nd-Fe-B alloys. - Copper and aluminum for electrical wiring. - Materials for electric batteries.

The course consists mainly of lessons, with some classroom and laboratory exercises.

Learning is based mainly on the lecture notes provided by the lecturer and on the students’ own notes. The following textbooks (which are freely accessible in the form of e-books trough the university libraries) are recommended for consultation: G. Krauss, "Steels, Processing, Structure, and Performance", 2nd ed., ASM International F.C. Campbell, "Elements of Metallurgy and Engineering Alloys", ASM International M.Y. Demeri, "Advanced High-Strength Steels: Science, Technology, and Applications", ASM International J.D. Rowe et al., "Advanced Materials in Automotive Engineering", Elsevier

Dispense; Video lezioni dell’anno corrente;

Modalita di esame: Prova scritta (in aula);

Exam: Written test;

... The exam aims to ascertain the knowledge and understanding of all the topics covered in the teaching and of their interrelationships. The exam is written and includes 5 open questions of equal value. The duration of the exam is 1 hour. All the answers will be evaluated on the basis of correctness (in respect to the state of the art) and completeness (in respect to the topics covered in the teaching). Textbooks, lecture notes, formularies, and electronic devices cannot be used during the exam.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilita o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unita Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione piu idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.