The Automotive Steel Design Manual Project provides the design engineer with first order analysis tools to assist in optimizing sheet steel automotive body designs. There are two components: the Automotive Steel Design Manual (ASDM), a 705 page printed document, and the Computerized Application and Reference System (CARS), a powerful software system.

The Body Systems Analysis Project analyzes and quantifies the capabilities of lightweighting manufacturing processes and technologies.

The Enhanced Forming Limit Project develops criteria to more accurately predict the formability of sheet steels that have been deformed over draw beads.

The High Strength Steel Stamping Projects target the expanded use of high strength steels. The DaimlerChrysler effort on this project seeks to validate and improve currently available modeling information to provide reliable springback prediction technology. The General Motors work is focused on development of an empirical knowledge base for use in the die development, design and tryout phases.

The Hydroforming Materials and Lubricants Project is working to improve finite modeling capability for hydroforming applications. Three areas under study are measurement of tube mechanical properties, assessment of the forming limit curve for hydroforming applications, and corner-fill experiments with mild and high strength steels.

The Joining Technologies Project combines the activities of the former Adhesive Bonding and Resistance Welding Projects to address joining technologies for advanced and ultra high strength steels. The new initiatives include the weldability of the advanced high strength steels, the efficacy of weldbonding on weld quality, and the impact properties of welded and bonded assemblies.

The Lightweight Closures Project has selected the design of the front door for a 2002 model year SUV as the basis of a study to reduce mass by as much as 25% while minimizing increased manufacturing cost. Future phases will address rear doors, hoods, rear compartment lids, liftgates, tailgates and sliding doors.

The Lightweight Front End Project is a two phase analysis effort to study the cost and mass effect of practical variations, in automotive front end structure design, required to accommodate vehicle options within a given vehicle family.

The Lightweight SUV Frame Project is focusing on efforts to reduce the weight of SUV frames by 25%. The first phase of the program is a feasibility study on one SUV frame and a second phase will refine the findings of the feasibility study through detailed cost analyses and crash modeling. Two additional SUV frames of other classes will be analyzed for weight reduction opportunities in future activities.

The Material Uniformity Project has documented the uniformity of mechanical and other critical properties of automotive sheet steels. Specific areas examined in this now inactive project include tensile strength, yield strength, elongation, and hardness, along with coating weights, thickness variation and surface roughness.

The Tooling Standardization Groups have developed the NAAMS Global Standard Components for both assembly and stamping tooling.This ongoing effort has significantly reduced the time and cost of designing and building assembly and stamping tools through the standardization of components. Essentially, all components reflect metric standards.

The Sheet Steel Fatigue Project develops fatigue data for a range of sheet steels that will be used in durability models to improve automotive design.

The Standardized Corrosion Test Project has standardized an accelerated laboratory test procedure, SAE J2334, to measure cosmetic corrosion on automotive body panels and to correlate with five-year field test results. Current work involves perfecting a standard perforation corrosion test to measure and correlate with field results.

The Strain Rate Characterization Project documents mechanical properties of steels at high strain rates to improve the computer modeling of crash simulations.

The Tailor Welded Blank Project has completed several publications on Tailor Welded Blank design, manufacturing and cost considerations. Current activities support the Lightweight Front End Structure Project with HSS TWB research and the Lightweight Closure Project through the study of 'patch' type tailored blanks. Additionally, research on Tailor Welded Tubes is being planned.

The Tribology Project will enhance the understanding of the effects of lubricants on springback variation and die wear associated with the stamping of High Strength and Ultra High Strength steels.