The Automotive Industry is a leading force seeking innovative solutions towards the weight reduction, safety regulations compliances and costs reduction. These directs the Automotive players in the development of several fields, from materials, manufacturing process, product development and others, to work as close as possible to reach improved and cheaper products in less time. In the past decade, strong efforts were made in the material science, namely in new steel products, such as: Multi-phase Steels; Boron Steels; Martensitic Steels; Twip Steels.
In parallel to the material science progresses, the manufacturing processes were evolved as well. In this field, to comply the nowadays complexity and the high resistance of the demanding new Automotive structural parts, several manufacturing processes were improved and implement: Hydroforming; Rollforming; Hotforming; Tailor Welded Blanks; Joining technologies. To answer the new challenges associated to new automotive products, new regulations standards (safety and emissions targets), weight and cost reduction and short development periods, the numerical simulation tools are essential to fulfill all these issues.
In this work, is presented an updated review, integrating new emerging materials and manufacturing processes. Furthermore, numerical simulation tools are applied in order to study the feasibility of an automotive sheet metal part that congregates new materials and recent implement manufacturing processes.