In recent years, hot-stamped components are more increasingly used in the automotive industry in order to reduce weight and to improve the strength of vehicles. In hot stamping process, blank is hot formed and press hardened in a tool. However, in hot stamping without cooling channel, temperature of the tool increases gradually in mass production thus cannot meet the critical cooling rate to obtain high strength over 1500 ㎫. Warpage occurs in the hot stamped component due to non-uniform stress state caused by unbalanced cooling. Therefore, tools should be uniformly as well as rapidly cooled down by the coolant which flows through cooling channel. In this paper, optimal design method of cooling channel to obtain uniform and high strength of the component is proposed. Optimized cooling channel is applied to the hot press Vbending process. As a result of measuring strength, hardness and microstructure of the hot formed parts, it is known that the design methodology of cooling channel is effective to the hot stamping process.
