International Congress on Advances in Welding Science and Technology for
Construction, Energy and Transportation Systems (AWST - 2011)
24-25 October 2011, Antalya, Turkey
Product and Process Aspects When Welding Press-hardened
Automotive Components
J. K. Larsson
Volvo Car Corporation, Advanced Body Engineering, Dept. 93620-PVS23, 40531 Gothenburg, Sweden
jlarsso1@volvocars.com
Abstract
This paper will discuss the experience from high volume
automotive production with a specific emphasis on the
welding of press-hardened steels and the quality
assurance of these welds. Different solutions about how
to solve weld brittleness at resistance spot welding will
be described; including advanced welding schedules but
also tailored tempering of the hot-formed components
themselves.
One section will exclusively describe the comprehensive
quality assurance procedures for the structural laser
welds in crucial crash protective components of the
company's latest car models. Laser welding showed to be
superior to other alternative joining methods regarding
the fulfillment of crash related tests in early development
phases of these car programmes, however such a welding
method puts specific requirements on both equipment but
also on parts accuracy and assembly tolerances.
Keywords: Automotive car body structures, Press-
hardened steels, Resistance spot welding, Laser beam
welding, Weld quality assurance
1. Introduction
Environmental aspects have become extremely important
when engineering new passenger cars in order to reduce
fuel consumption and toxic emissions. One step is to
decrease the weight of the vehicle, which for the car
body structure means down-gauging the components and
introduce more advanced high strength steels (AHSS) to
be able to maintain a high performance in terms of
crashworthiness, durability etc.
One such steel is the ultra high strength (UHS) press-
hardened and hot-formed Boron-alloyed steel. Apart
from a unique process technology, when manufacturing
automotive components in this material, it also contains
specific alloy elements in order to guarantee a high
ultimate strength (Tab. 1). The drawback is that due to
the alloy content these components become more
difficult to weld, regardless which welding method used.
At various loading conditions, these welds also present a
different behaviour to what is common for welds applied
in lower strength steel grades. Therefore, the introduction
of press-hardened body components not only affects the
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production conditions, but also the overall performance
of the body structure.
Table 1. Nominal chemical composition the Aluminium-Silicon
coated USIBOR 1500P.
C Si Mn P S Cr Al Ti B
0.23 0.2 1.1 0.01 0.00 0.1 0.03 0.03 0.002
4 4 6 1 4 9 6 9 4
2. The Press-Hardening Process
Press-hardening or hot-stamping and die quenching is a
method to produce ultra high strength components for the
automotive industry. It has been used since the mid-
80ies, and typical components produced by the press-
hardening process are e.g. A- and B-pillar
reinforcements, floor sills, cantrails, side impact door
beams and bumper beams. To enable the Boron-alloyed
steel material to be formed and further on cooled down
to a fully martensitic structure, the material first has to be
heated up to its austenitization temperature at around
880-950C. To achieve a fully martensitic structure, the
cooling rate must exceed 25-30C/s. The small amount
of Boron is used to facilitate the quenching process,
wherefore the material often is referred to as Boron steel
in colloquial terms.
The hot forming process is mainly divided into two
different approaches, the indirect and the direct one,
where the direct process is the most commonly used
among the automotive OEMs (Original Equipment
Manufacturers). These two processes offer different
advantages for the final application in terms of design
versus cost, and available choices for surface protection.
Making the first forming step(s) by conventional cold
forming, the indirect process offers the possibility for
more complex geometries and undercut designs before
the shaped components are heated, transferred to the
oven and finally tempered (Fig. 1). This means that two
sets of tools are necessary, one for pressing and one for
cooling. One advantage however, with this process is that
it offers the possibility to use a conventional zinc-based
coating for cathodic corrosion protection.

Figure 1. Schematic description of the indirect hot-forming process;
Cold-forming of the blank, heating of the pressed part, rapid
cooling, post processing like laser- or tool cutting etc.
In the direct process, the forming operation is integrated
with the cooling in the same tool (Fig. 2), This means
that the parts reach their final shape and strength in one
single press operation, and are therefore often referred to
as "hot-stamped" or "hot-formed". The formed
components remain in the dies until they have cooled
down to between 100-200C. All Boron-alloyed steel
components in today's Volvo cars are manufactured
using the direct process. Most car applications such as
door beams, bumper beams, sill reinforcements, A, B and
C-pillars and roof bows can be produced with the direct
process. The indirect process might however be
necessary if more advanced parts are considered.
Figure 2. Schematic description of the direct hot-forming process;
Heating of the blank, forming of blank to final shape, consequent
rapid cooling, post processing like laser- or tool cutting etc.
The upper limit for Boron steel in a car body is judged to
be around 45%, which more or less includes the whole
safety cage with its backing structure. A rough estimation
gives that an increase of Boron steel from 10% to 40%
would reduce the body weight with approximately 30 kg
with unchanged properties, i.e. stiffness, strength, crash
and NVH (Noise, Vibrations & Harshness).
Figure 3. Development trends regarding the utilization of press-
hardened body components at Volvo Car Corporation.
The amount of Boron steel in body structures from Volvo
Cars has increased from 3% in 2000 to 18% in 2010 [1],
and will exceed 20% in the near future (Fig. 3). Fiat, VW
and BMW show similar figures today, but the difference is
that today these companies have their own in-house
production, whereas Volvo Cars purchase all Boron
alloyed parts from external suppliers.
3. General Aspects on Welding of Ultra High
Strength Press-Hardened Steels
When welding in press-hardened body components there
are numerous aspects to be considered. If we look at the
most commonly used assembly method, resistance spot
welding, first of all the surface condition is to be
discussed. The hot-forming process leads to the
formation of a thin oxide layer. This must be removed,
which today usually is done by a shot-blasting operation,
in order to have better conditions for the welding
process. One of the characteristics of a shot-blasted
surface is however the variation of the electric resistance
of the surface (Fig. 4). This is especially pronounced
when the component has a complex shape, which limits
the accessibility of the shot-blasting nozzle and therefore
results in an inadequate cleaning of the surface. The
variation of the electric resistivity of shot-blasted
surfaces is sufficient to disturb the spot welding process
and significantly decrease the weld quality of a
conventionally welded spot. For that reason, the
recommendation is to use adaptive weld timers for those
welding guns that have to apply spot welds in un-coated
Boron-alloyed steel components [2]. Adaptive weld
timers work in such a way that the system measures the
resistance, in the equipment itself and the sheet
components that are to be welded, and compares the
voltage curve to a calibrated one, which will guarantee
an approved weld nugget size. The system then reacts
either by increasing the current or prolonging the
welding time if there are any deviations from the nominal
values. Another solution to establish homogenous surface
conditions is to introduce a surface coating on the
material intended for hot-forming. In such a case it might
be possible to utilize conventional constant current
regulation for the welding process. The dominating
coating type is an aluminium-silicon mixture with an
approximate thickness of 45 m, however many steel
suppliers are developing alternatives based on more
conventional zinc layers.
Figure 4. The surface resistivity of a shot-blasted, hot-formed
component revealing the variation between measurement points.
International Congress on Advances in Welding Science and Technology for
Construction, Energy and Transportation Systems (AWST - 2011)
24-25 October 2011, Antalya, Turkey
There are some other approaches to design and produce a
press-hardened part that influences the spot welding
process. First the so called tailored-rolling process that
will results in a thickness variation of the component. In
the transition zone between thick and thin material,
which length in general is 100 the local sheet thinning,
it is recommended to avoid the positioning of a spot weld
right there. Another positioning aspect is when patch
technology is used. Here the spot welding process is
performed in soft material condition before the hot-
forming is carried out, when a local reinforcement plate
is welded on top of the main component. This means that
it is important to put the spot welds outside the radii in
the final component. Otherwise there is an obvious risk
for cracking in the weld circumference.
4. Early Experiences About How Weld
Parameter Settings can Influence Spot Weld
Properties
One early observation of the specific behaviour of spot
welds applied in hot-formed components came after the
Volvo Body Manufacturing Team requested to shorten
the cycle time during spot welding. The idea was to
significantly reduce the hold time in order to be able to
put more spot welds with each robot during the station
cycle time, which today is around 67 seconds in the
companys high volume plants. The effect from a short
hold time of 30 ms was neglectible in terms of the static
shear and peel strength of the spot weld. However, when
the spot welds behaviour under fatigue and crash loads
were investigated other concerns arose.
In the fatigue tests, performed on H-shaped specimens
with a load ratio of R = 0.05 and a cyclic frequency of 20
Hz, it was observed that the reduced hold (or cooling)
time had a negative effect. Compared to those welded
with the normal hold time of 200 ms, the fatigue life was
almost 50% less. The explanation is that the shorter
cooling time does not allow the weld nugget to fully
develop, which in turn will introduce sharp notch effects
(Fig. 5).
Figure 5. The sharp notch effect (circled), which is devastating
from a fatigue loading perspective, is a result of a too short
cooling (hold) time.
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However, at crash tests the results were the opposite, as
here it looked as the reduced cooling time had a positive
effect on the energy absorption. These tests were
performed on simple overlap test specimens with single
spot welds, shear loaded at a speed rate of 10 m/sec. It
can be understood that the longer cooling time leads to a
more rapid cooling of the weld metal and thereby
increasing martensite formation and embrittlement in the
spot weld. The shorter hold time allows the weld metal to
cool down under slower conditions, however the cooling
speed is still too high to be able to avoid the martensitic
region in the phase diagram (Fig. 6). This can only be
done at such a slow cooling rate as 25 C/s, which is
impossible to reach with the described approach.
Therefore other solutions must be introduced in order to
increase the ductility of the spot welds, something that
will be described further on.
Figure 6. The CCT diagram revealing that a cooling rate lower
than 25 C/s is necessary to avoid the martensitic region.
5. How to Increase Spot Weld Ductility by
Specific Pulse Programmes
Spot welds applied in press-hardened steel parts often
show a tendency for less ductile fracture behavior
compared to welds in mild steel and the softer grades of
high strength steels, with fracture types such as
interfacial fracture or partial plug failure. The load
capacity may still be high or very high, but the
elongation values are lower, which reduces the energy
absorption capability in the weld in the event of a car
crash. As can be seen from Figure 7, the ductility in
terms of elongation and energy absorption is strongly
dependent of the fracture mode, where samples showing
full button pull-out failure are much more ductile. Thus,
if the weld parameters can be chosen in order to create
full button pull-out failure behaviour, improvements in
ductility will be achieved. This will be done if the
microstructure can be changed in such a way that the
fracture will propagate through the sheet (red arrow in
Fig. 8) instead of through the weld (blue arrow).
Figure 7. Tensile test curves with correspondent images for the
three typical fracture modes.
Figure 8. Fracture propagation for interfacial failure (blue arrow)
and full button pullout failure (red arrow). The later allows a
larger amount of plastic deformation (right), with a typical
rotation of the weld plug during loading.
Therefore different pulse sequences were investigated in
order to increase the elongation values for spot welded
joints, and with the objective to avoid partial plug or
interfacial failures [3].
5.1. Widening of the soft zone
To achieve a full button pullout failure the soft zone in
the heat-affected zone (HAZ) must be wide enough to be
able to undergo the amount of plastic deformation
involved with the rotation described above when the spot
weld is loaded. The soft zone is here defined as the area
with hardness below 400 HV. The area of the soft zone is
believed to be increased when increasing the heat input.
This can be done by using a second welding pulse. The
first pulse would in this case be the welding pulse which
creates the nugget. After a pause time, the second pulse
is triggered and it could either re-melt the nugget,
allowing it to grow or simply just heat-treat it. The
purpose is to get an annealed and/or tempered structure
in the heat-affected zone, and variations of pause time,
post-pulse time and current will influence the result.
Testing was carried out on specimen consisting of two
1.8 mm thick AlSi-coated Boron steel (USIBOR)
coupons. The chemical composition of the material can
be seen in Table 1. A resistance spot welding gun with
MFDC (Medium Frequency Direct Current ~1000Hz)
was used for the welding trials. The inverter was a
Matuschek Auto SPATZ M600 with a maximum short
circuit current of 21 kA and the electrode force was
variable between 1-6.2 kN. The programming unit was a
PC-based Matuschek SPATZ AS-1 system. Figure 9
shows a picture and data on the spot welding gun used in
the investigation.
Figure 9. The spot welding gun of X-type used for the trials, with
additional technical information above.
Two fundamentally different ways to achieve full button
pull-out through post pulsing was found. Post pulse A,
which aims to increase the size of the weld nugget and
the soft zone surrounding it. The other one, post pulse B,
is aimed to create two soft zones. The later is more time
consuming and needs a longer pause time than pulse A,
but it is useful if one wants to keep the original nugget
size. The ductility was evaluated in terms of energy
absorption and elongation during linear tensile shear
testing at room temperature. The investigations made so
far have shown that it is possible to improve the ductility
in terms of elongation and energy absorption capability
during tensile shear testing by using a post pulse.
5.2. The effects of two different welding pulse
sequences
The two weld schedules and their effects can be
described as follows:
Post pulse type A: A shorter pause time and high energy
input during the post pulse is creating a large nugget
diameter as well as a wide soft zone. If the current is
further increased the risk for expulsion will increase and
an extended post pulse time will not increase the nugget
size. These parameters, short pause time and high current
in the second welding pulse, are believed to generate the
highest possible energy absorption during tensile shear
testing, due to that 100% full button pullout fracture is
achieved.
Post pulse type B: A longer pause time and less energy
input during the post pulse is used in this case in order to
International Congress on Advances in Welding Science and Technology for
Construction, Energy and Transportation Systems (AWST - 2011)
24-25 October 2011, Antalya, Turkey
maintain the nugget diameter. A second soft zone is
created by the post pulse. The pause time is optimized to
position this soft zone adjacent to the soft zone from the
initial weld pulse, thereby forming a wider soft zone.
This alternative is more time consuming and might
require a total welding cycle time of about 2 seconds.
The two different approaches of post pulsing, as well as a
reference weld carried out by conventional single pulse
welding, were tested by tensile shear loading of 10
samples of each version. The fracture mode, energy
absorption, elongation, maximum load and button
diameter were recorded (see Table 2).
Table 2. Results from tensile shear testing of spot welds made by
using various pulse programmes.
Maximu Energy Full
m load absorption button Button size
pullout
Reference 32 kN 25 J 20 % 9.1 mm
Post pulse A 37 kN 82 J 90 % 11.1 mm
Post pulse B 30 kN 60 J 100 % 9.0 mm
The most promising parameter sets were also tested
using high speed tensile shear testing. The test equipment
is designed to perform tensile tests with a maximum
speed of 20 m/s, and the test specimen is positioned
between two grippers in the machine. A catapult, driven
by an MTS hydraulic test machine, accelerates a drop
weight which hits the lower grip, initiating the test
procedure. The maximum speed of the piston in the MTS
machine is 1 m/s which, after a specially designed
hydraulic gear, generates a speed of 20 m/s for the
catapult. The improvements in ductility in terms of
energy absorption during regular tensile shear testing
created by the post pulses are also exhibited during high
speed testing.
The introduction of specific welding schedules and
optimized welding parameters have shown to be
successful for the enlargement of the softer HAZ around
the spot welds, which improves the ductility at spot weld
failure and thereby the energy absorption. In general this
leads to longer welding cycles, which however might be
acceptable for a limited number of spot welds, which are
crucial for the component behaviour in that respect that
they need to present a more ductile behavior when
loaded.
6. Think Outside the Box Tailored
Tempering for Increased Spot Weld
Ductility
In the previous chapter it was described how to improve
the energy absorption at spot weld failure in press-
hardened components, but for most applications the
dimensioning criteria is that the weld shall stay intact.
The spot welded joint shall guarantee a good backing and
allow the body components to deform just by plasticizing
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of the steel sheet material. In such a case it would be
detrimental to widen the soft zone as described above,
because this will serve as an initiator for cracks
propagating from the spot welds and through the metal in
the weld flange. One solution to prevent such behaviour
is to manufacture the press-hardened part according to
the tailored tempering methodology. This means that
some areas in the component are not tempered to its full
strength, something that could be achieved either by
different heating/cooling conditions during the hot-
forming process, but also through a subsequent operation
after forming by local tempering of such areas [4].
Regarding spot welding it is preferable to have not fully
hardened weld flanges, which will help overcome both
the problem with brittle weldment behavior, but also to
prevent crack initiations around the spot welds.
There are two main techniques to obtain such soft areas.
In the first one a two-parted oven is being used meaning
that in the beginning the whole sheet is heated to the
austanization temperature. Later on the sheet reaches the
area with the split part of the oven where one section is
still kept around 920C, whereas the other one has a
lower temperature (Fig. 10). This means that when the
sheet is taken from the oven and put into the forming
tool, only a limited area will have the high
time/temperature cooling rate and result in the typical
ultimate strength of around 1,500 MPa. The remaining
part of the component will be much softer, and the
strength in this area can be tailored to in practice any
strength wanted, but in general typical strength values are
around 600 MPa.
Figure 10. The principle of the two-parted oven in order to manufacture
press-hardened components with locally softer areas. When lowering the
oven temperature it will be possible to reformate the austenite in the
ferritic microstructure.
The other technique to achieve these uneven cooling
conditions are more sophisticated and therefore also
more expensive, but allows more than just one softer
area. Here the sheets are heated in the regular oven, but
the cooling channels in the forming tool are positioned at
different distances from the tool surface (Fig. 11).
Cooling channels close to the surface means a more rapid
cooling compared to those areas where the channels are
put deeper into the tool body.
Another advantage with this method is that the transition
zone between the fully hardened area and the softer one
is very narrow, between 10-30 mm, whereas the
technique with the split oven normally results in a 100
mm wide transition zone.
 the desired behaviour of no spot weld failure indicating
that this technology seems to be very robust. The
recommendation is however to specify the weld flanges
to a hardness of 300 Hv (Fig. 13 and 14).

Figure 11. The complexity of cooling channels for a front side

member hot-forming tool, which makes it possible to improve
buckling behaviour and energy absorption by reducing the
strength and hardness in specific areas of the component.

Numerous trials were performed as dynamic four-point

bending testing, with an impact speed between 7-10
m/sec, on spot welded box beams to validate the effects
of the softer weld flanges [5]. The beams normally
consisted of an omega shaped hat-profile where the
flanges were softened to different hardness levels and a
flat lid made out of DP600 material. The drop weight
impactor always hit on the hat-side. Observing the
difference in failure behaviour between fully hardened
and soft flanges was astonishing. The completely
hardened beams collapsed already at moderate loading
conditions by cracks occurring around the spot welds and Figure 13. Drop weight testing of beams with soft flanges (200 Hv)
in the hat profiles; impact velocity 9.5 m/sec.
then propagating through the weld flange to the flange
edge (Fig. 12).

Figure 12. Drop weight testing of beams with fully hardened hat
profiles; impact velocity 9.0 m/sec.
The beams with the soft weld flanges could withstand
much larger deformations while the spot welds still
remained intact. Conventionally hardened Boron steel
presents a Vickers hardness of more than 400 Hv. In the
tests, flanges softened to between 200-350 Hv all gave
Figure 14. Drop weight testing of beams with soft flanges (300 Hv)
in the hat profiles; impact velocity 9.5 m/sec.
Another observation made was that if two press-hardened
parts are spot welded together it is important that both of
them are manufactured with soft flanges, otherwise the
positive effects shown above will be lost (Fig. 15).
International Congress on Advances in Welding Science and Technology for
Construction, Energy and Transportation Systems (AWST - 2011)
24-25 October 2011, Antalya, Turkey
AWST-11/04

Figure 16. Display of the on-line monitoring of various laser

welding parameters.

Figure 15. Drop weight testing of beams with soft flanges (200 Hv)
in the hat profiles but fully hardened lids; impact velocity 7.9
m/sec.
Figure 17. A purpose developed tool for post-checking of laser
7. Extensive Quality Assurance Procedures weld quality by ultrasonic inspection.

When Laser Welding in Press-Hardened

In the event of an alert from the on-line monitoring
Steels system, that specific body is taken out of the line for
further diagnosis by ultrasonic and visual checking.
Laser welding of car bodies has been used by Volvo Cars Furthermore, 3 car bodies per work shift are randomly
since 1991; however the early applications were limited picked out for ultrasonic inspection, and one of these is
to less critical connections such as roofs to body-sides then the subject of destructive checking procedures in
and for other outer skin panels. But starting with the order to correlate the non-destructive results with the
launch of the XC60 model in 2008, all newer models destructive outcome. If any deviations from the
present an extended use of laser welding, around 10 acceptable quality are found a direct feed-back is given
meters per car body. This also includes more critical for necessary adjustments of the production process. In
welds in the safety cage structure and is done on press- the case that the specified laser weld quality is not
hardened components such as the A-pillar, B-pillar and fulfilled, repair actions have to be taken.
floor sill reinforcements. Since the laser welds now are
important elements for the structural integrity of the car
body, it is obvious that the quality assurance procedures
of these welds in high volume production has been high-
lighted.
Nowadays Volvo Cars two European volume plants,
Gent in Belgium and Torslanda in Sweden, have
common procedures about how to secure the quality of
the structural laser welds mentioned above [6]. An on-
line monitoring system (Fig. 16) guarantees that the
welding parameters stay within certain limits necessary
for an appropriate weld quality. Furthermore, post
checking of these welds is done with a purpose
developed ultrasonic device (Fig. 17). These actions are
complemented with monitoring of the cover slide Figure 18. The advanced work flow of quality checking and potential
repair of laser welds in high volume car body production.
contamination and other crucial parameters, preventive
maintenance schedules and weld inspection instructions.
For laser welded joints with only single-sided access,
The workflow of the laser weld quality assurance is
repair can be performed as laser welding. Alternative
shown in Figure 18.
joining processes at single-sided accessibility are any
suitable gas-metal-arc welding (GMAW) method, e.g.
metal-arc active gas welding (MAG), metal-arc inert gas
welding (MIG), tungsten inert gas arc welding (TIG), [3] Rydgren, P., Wahlsten, J. and Hedegrd, J., Increasing the
ductility of RSW joints in UHS steel through parameter
etc. When repairing with a gas-metal arc method the area adjustment, Part 1, KIMAB report 2010-544
in question first has to be cleaned with a steel brush. [4] Hedegrd, O. and slund, M., Tempering of hot-formed steel
Then the weld is repaired in the positions described in using induction heating, Chalmers university of technology
the appropriate repair instruction and correspondent report 54/2011 (Masters thesis)
[5] Wstlund, C., "Tailored Properties for Press-hardened Body
repair drawing. After once more having cleaned the area Parts, Automotive Circle International (ACI), Insight Edition,
with a steel brush the weld is grinded to a flush condition Gothenburg, Sweden, September 20-21, 2011
by removing excessive weld metal, and finally a third [6] Larsson, J.K. and Palmquist, N.T., " Two Intensively Laser
steel brush cleaning operation is performed. Welded Body Versions Built on One Platform and Manufactured
in Two Plants" European Automotive Laser Applications
For joints with double-sided access, resistance spot (EALA), Bad Nauheim, Germany, February 9-10, 2011
welding (RSW) can be used as a repair method provided
that this is approved by the responsible Body
Engineering Department. This is due to that exchanging a
continuous joint with an intermittent one might affect the
performance of the car body. In the case of substituting a
complete body component with a new one, such as a roof
panel, this new component shall be attached using
regular laser welding parameters. If, for any reason, the
repair cannot be carried out in accordance with any of
the actions described above, a Temporary Part Deviation
(TPD) has to be requested by the manufacturing unit.

8. Conclusions and Recommendations

Considered for a high strength steel scenario in the

automotive industry, press-hardened Boron steel is quite
unchallenged regarding the attributes of ultra high
strength in combination with high formability from the
hot-forming process. However, a lot of work yet remains
to fully utilize a robust implementation from a virtual
point of view, together with refined solutions for
surrounding techniques such as welding in order to
minimize the influences of brittle behavior.
To fully meet these demands there should be a mutual
interest from both the material suppliers and hot-forming
suppliers together with the automotive OEMs to establish
guidelines for the required test data and format, e.g. hot
forming simulations generating mapping data for e.g.
advanced crash and welding simulations. The car
manufacturers generally lack the needed competence and
resources so this must also be provided by the suppliers.
Otherwise, there is a risk that the development of new
Boron steel technology will slow down as OEMs
continue to use well known materials and processes to
ensure CAE predictability as well as a high weld quality
for the assembly of tomorrows car body structures.

References
[1] Fermr, M., Jergeus, J., Johansson, R., Larsson, J. K., "Hot-
Formed Steel in Car Body Structures", International Automotive
Body Conference (IABC), Munich, Germany, September 22-23,
2010
[2] Larsson, J.K., Lundgren, J, Asbjrnsson, E. and Andersson, H.,
"Extensive Introduction of Ultra High Strength Steels sets New
Standards for Welding in the Body Shop", Proceedings 61st
Annual Assembly of the International Institute of Welding (IIW),
Joint Workshop Commission III & SC-Auto, Graz, Austria, July
6-11, 2008