High strength, low alloy steels are a cost-effective choice for increasing strength-to-weight ratios when compared to conventional mild carbon steels. HSLA steels also have excellent bendability and weldability and can increase the strength and/or decrease the weight for a variety of body-in-white and chassis automotive components, including suspensions, beams, and subframes.
HSLA steels have yield strengths greater than 275 MPa (40 ksi) and are typically 20% to 30% lighter than carbon steel at the same strength levels. They are different than other advanced high strength steels (AHSS) as they are named after their yield strength.
HSLA is precipitation-strengthened ferrite and small amounts of pearlite and bainite. With little pearlite and no other hard phases, high strength steels with low alloy have better fineblanking properties than dual phase grades.
Low carbon and low (“lean”) alloy content also gives HSLA steels increased ductility, toughness, and weldability. Their low alloy content — plus no need for post-forming heat treatment — makes these high strength steels with low alloy an economical choice for many automotive body-in-white and chassis applications.
HSLA steels provide a straightforward way to increase the strength of automotive components and thereby reduce their weight. Weldability is good due to lean alloy composition and bendability is excellent.
Hot-rolled Docol HSLA steels can be used for applications such as chassis, seat mechanisms, suspension systems and wheels.
Seat brackets and reinforcements can be suitable applications for cold-rolled Docol HSLA steels.
Either hot- or cold-rolled Docol HSLA can be used for beams and cross members, reinforcements, and other structural components.
*Available upon request.
Concerned about edge quality or micro-cracks during forming? Consider our high edge (HE) HSLA steel.
Docol® HSLA steel grades are supplied to EN 10149-2:2010 standards with dual certifications to the appropriate strength level MC standard also available. If you need an OEM customized HSLA grade, please contact our technical support for your specific automotive part application.
Safety engineers: Achieve optimized crash performance by selecting from a wide variety of HSLA strengths.
Lightweighting engineers: Accomplish straightforward weight reductions of 20% to 30% or more compared to typical carbon steels.
Production engineers: Use existing cold-forming equipment and techniques, ensuring rapid parts throughput with exceptionally consistent Docol® steel.
Buyers: Take advantage of Docol® HSLA steels affordability while more than doubling the yield strengths compared to your existing conventional carbon steel.
Sustainability officers: Immediately benefit from Docol® HSLA steels’ modest carbon footprint — getting virgin, iron-ore based grades with the CO2 equivalence of recycled steel. And in 2026, there will be fossil-free Docol® high strength steel with low alloy.
A unique offer from SSAB: we ship coils, sheets and custom lengths of any size, typically in 1 to 2 weeks. Get AHSS samples for both our commercially available steels, as well as our newest grades still in development.
HSLA steel’s microstructure is mostly precipitation-strengthened ferrite, with small amounts of pearlite and bainite added depending on required strength levels. These micro-alloying elements contribute to fine carbide precipitations, interstitial and substitutional strengthening, and the grain-size refinement of HSLA steels.
The modest premium for high strength low alloy steel can more than double a component’s strength compared to using a plain carbon steel. With excellent bendability, weldability and fineblanking properties, HSLA steel facilitates parts with good fatigue-loading performance.
HSLA steels are a basic way to reduce component weight by increasing the strength of the steel. Hot-rolled HSLA steel applications include suspension systems, wheels, chassis, and seat mechanisms. Cold-rolled HSLA steels can be appropriate for seat brackets and reinforcements.
Ultra-high strength steels (UHSS) in cars are simply advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) with significantly higher minimum tensile strengths. Viewed another way, UHSS (aka “ultra-high tensile steels”) are a subset of the boarder category of AHSS steels.
Ferritic-Bainitic are multi-phased steels with high hole expansion ratios and good edge stretch capabilities. FB steels are suited for cold-formed and punched flanges when lightweighting automotive components such as wheels, cross members, and other structural parts.
Press hardening steels have four major advantages: they can be formed into very complex shapes, their ultimate tensile strength ranges up to 2000 MPa (290 ksi), there is little or no springback, and, with tailored tempering, you can combine “full hard zones” and “soft zones” for multi-function crash performance within a single part.
Complex phase steels have the highest — up to 100% — hole expansion ratios available from advanced high strength steels. Their high HER values provide excellent cold-forming properties for punched and stretched edges/flanges, as well as deep-drawn shapes. CP steels’ superior yield strengths are used for high crash-energy absorption, while their elevated UTS levels enable thinner walls for significant automobile weight reductions.
Martensitic steel combines tensile strengths up to 1700 MPa with good ductility, making it highly efficient for both vehicle lightweighting and improved crash protection — especially in anti-intrusion zones.
Dual phase with high formability/ductility (DH) steels are TRIP-assisted, 3rd Generation automotive steels with high global and local formability and good resistance to edge cracking. DH steel have excellent energy-absorbing properties, included reserved ductility during crash impact. DH grades are ideal for complex geometries, including cold deep drawing. DH steel's FLDs and HERs are superior to DP steels, enabling scrap reduction and more streamlined stamping.
Dual phase automotive steels have an excellent balance of ductility, high tensile strengths, easy cold formability, and very good crash energy-absorption. Its high early-stage strain hardening (n-value) makes DP steel resistant to local necking due to strain redistribution — providing highly uniform elongation. Dual phase steel’s low yield-to-tensile-strength ratio creates high global formability for deep-drawing and high-stretching capacities — all with good weldability.
High edge ductility HSLA steel with greatly improved local formability and high hole expansion ratios – ideal for challenging auto components with complex designs on sheared stretched edges.