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Fe-Zn Alloy Coating on Galvannealed (GA) Steel Sheet to Improve Product Qualities

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Abstract

Galvannealed steel sheets (GA) have become the mainstream steel sheet for automobile applications because of their superior corrosion resistance, paintability, and weldability. To impart specific properties, different coatings on GA steel sheet were reported to improve properties further. In this context, we have developed an electroplating process (flash coating) for bright and adherent Fe-Zn alloy coating on GA steel sheet to enhance performances such as weldability, frictional behavior, phosphatability, and defect coverage. A comparative study with bare GA steel sheet was carried out for better elastration. The electroplating time was reduced below 10 s for practical applicability in an industrial coating line by modulating the bath composition. Electroplating was performed at current density of 200-500 A/m2 which yielded with higher cathode current efficiency of 85-95%. The performance results show that Fe-10 wt.% Zn-coated GA steel sheet (coating time 7 s) has better spot weldability, lower dynamic coefficient of friction (0.06-0.07 in lubrication), and better corrosion resistance compared to bare GA steel sheet. Uniform phosphate coating with globular crystal size of 2-5 µm was obtained on Fe-Zn flash-coated GA steel sheet. Hopeite was the main phosphate compound (77.9 wt.%) identified along with spencerite (13.6 wt.%) and phosphophyllite (8.5 wt.%).

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Mr. V. Sharma for surface characterization, Mr. L. R. Murmu for spot weldability test, Mrs. Nitu Rani and Mr. S. K. Mishra for phosphating experiments, Mr. M. K. Lal for frictional coefficient measurement and Ms. Samvedana for grazing XRD measurement. Authors would like to thank Mr. K. Sakhare and Dr. A. Chattopadyyay for their help in lineup GA samples. Also support from Dr. N. Bandyopadhyay is highly acknowledged.

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  1. Research and Development Department, Tata Steel Ltd, Jamshedpur, 831001, India

    Debabrata Pradhan, Akshya Kumar Guin, Pankaj Raju, Manindra Manna, Monojit Dutta & T. Venugopalan

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  1. Debabrata Pradhan
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  2. Akshya Kumar Guin
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Correspondence to Debabrata Pradhan.

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Pradhan, D., Guin, A.K., Raju, P. et al. Fe-Zn Alloy Coating on Galvannealed (GA) Steel Sheet to Improve Product Qualities. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 23, 3336–3346 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-014-1086-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-014-1086-5

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