Press hardening of Medium Manganese steels has increased attention in automotive industry as it produces components with higher ductility than currently used Manganese-Boron steels. The Medium Manganese steels form ultra fine-grained multi phase microstructures containing retained austenite and different body-centered cubic phases, such as fresh martensite, tempered martensite, and ferrite, with different carbon content each depending on the heat treatment parameters. For application to industrial press hardening, it is required to determine a robust process window. The major part is concentrated on linking the process-structure mainly the models and simulations to predict the microstructure evolution during processing.

 Computational modelling involved the numerical simulations of heat treatments with the hot stamping process. A thermo-elastic–plastic constitutive model based on the Von Mises yield criterion with associated plastic flow is implemented in Abaqus with subroutines to determine the optimum quenching temperature. The implemented model results are compared with experimental results. Therefore, the phase proportions change will affect both the thermal and mechanical properties of the continuously formed and cooled blank.

During the Partitioning process, the part is annealed between Ms and Ac1 temperatures leading to diffusion of carbon and manganese from martensite to austenite leading to tempering of primary martensite and stabilization of austenite. The diffusion kinetics is modeled to determine the optimum partitioning time. The integrated computational modelling approach helps us to determine the suitable process window for the hot stamping process.