Abstract
Hot press forming allows geometrically complicated parts to be formed from sheet and the rapid cooling hardens them to extremely high strength. The main purpose of this research is to characterize Al coated layer in Al coated boron steel during hot press forming. For the hot press hardening experiment, test specimens were heated up to $810{\sim}930^{\circ}C$ and held for 3, 6 and 9 minutes, respectively. And then, some specimens were press hardened and others were air-cooled without any pressing for the comparison purpose. Al coated layer shows four distinct micro-structural regions of interest; diffusion zone, Al-Fe zone(I) low-Al zone(LAZ) and Al-Fe zone(II). Band-like LAZ is clearly shown at temperature ranges of $810{\sim}870^{\circ}C$ and sparsely dispersed at temperature higher than 900oC. The micro-cracking behavior in the Al coated layer during forming were also analyzed by bending and deep drawing tests. The strain concentration in softer LAZ is found to be closely related with micro-cracking and exfoliation in coated layer during forming.