Material Optimization for Design Improvement of Crash Energy Absorbers

Author(s):  
Hesham Ibrahim

Crash energy absorbers in the form of thin walled tubes play a significant role in mitigating the harmful effects of frontal vehicles accidents on occupants. Specific energy absorbed (SEA), which is the ratio of impact energy absorbed to mass, is usually used to evaluate the efficiency of crash energy absorbers. A good design of a crash energy absorber must maximize the amount of impact energy that can be absorbed with a certain weight. The formal approach that has been used to improve the design of crash energy absorbers is to employ optimization to search for the optimum thickness distribution that maximizes SEA. This approach can be conceptualized as searching the design space in only one dimension (thickness). In this paper, a new dimension is added to the design space (material type). The proposed approach considers the type of material as a variable. An optimum design is then found by not only searching for the optimum thickness distribution, but also by selecting the optimum material type. The approach is demonstrated to the design improvement of a crash energy absorber in the form of a thin walled tube of square cross section. Steel and magnesium have been used as the two material alternatives. Magnesium has been selected due to its low density that had made it a promising candidate for use as a structural material in the automobile manufacturing. The results have shown that following the proposed technique, SEA has been increased by 54% compared to the value obtained through following the formal design optimization approach.

Author(s):  
Sanjay Patil ◽  
Arvind Bhosale ◽  
Vijaypatil Dhepe ◽  
Dheeraj Lengare ◽  
Ravi Kakde

The continuing efforts of automotive technology aim to deliver even greater safety benefits and reduce the weight of a vehicle. Thin-walled beams (TWB) are widely used as strengtheners or energy absorbers in vehicle bodies due to their lightweight and excellent energy absorption capacity. Thus, researchers are interested in the collapse behaviour and mechanical properties of thin-walled beams under static and dynamic loadings. Circular TWB is commonly used in vehicle side doors. In the event of a side collision, this beam deforms and absorbs the greatest amount of impact energy. In this study, the energy absorption capability and crashworthiness of polygonal cross-section TWBs subjected to lateral impact was investigated using numerical simulations. Polygonal TWB ranging from square to dodecagon, as well as circular cross section, were selected for this study. Energy absorption (EA), specific energy absorption (SEA) and crash force efficiency (CFE) crashworthiness indicators are employed to evaluate the bending collapse performance. Because TWB thickness and weight have a greater impact on bending performance, they were kept constant across all polygons. In ABAQUS explicit dynamic software, finite element simulations are performed, and plastic hinges and flattening patterns of all polygons are examined. The results show that heptagon, octagon, and nonagon cross-section TWB perform better in crashworthiness than square and circular TWB.


Author(s):  
J. V. Muruga Lal Jeyan ◽  
Akhila Rupesh ◽  
Jency Lal

The aerodynamic module combines the three-dimensional nonlinear lifting surface theory approach, which provides the effective propagated incident velocity and angle of attack at the blade section separately, and a two-dimensional panel method for steady axisymmetric and non-symmetric flow has to be involved to obtain the 3D pressure and velocity distribution on the wind mill model blade. Wind mill and turbines have become an economically competitive form of efficiency and renewable work generation. In the abroad analytical studies, the wind turbine blades to be the target of technological improvements by the use of highly possible systematic , aerodynamic and design, material analysis, fabrication and testing. Wind energy is a peculiar form of reduced form of density source of power. To make wind power feasible, it is important to optimize the efficiency of converting wind energy into productivity source. Among the different aspects involved, rotor aerodynamics is a key determinant for achieving this goal. There is a tradeoff between thin airfoil and structural efficiency. Both of which have a strong impact on the cost of work generated. Hence the design and analysis process for optimum design requires determining the load factor, pressure and velocity impact and optimum thickness distribution by finding the effect of blade shape by varying thickness on the basis of both the aerodynamic output and the structural weight.


Author(s):  
Martin Noack ◽  
Arnold Kühhorn ◽  
Markus Kober ◽  
Matthias Firl

AbstractThis paper presents a new FE-based stress-related topology optimization approach for finding bending governed flexible designs. Thereby, the knowledge about an output displacement or force as well as the detailed mounting position is not necessary for the application. The newly developed objective function makes use of the varying stress distribution in the cross section of flexible structures. Hence, each element of the design space must be evaluated with respect to its stress state. Therefore, the method prefers elements experiencing a bending or shear load over elements which are mainly subjected to membrane stresses. In order to determine the stress state of the elements, we use the principal stresses at the Gauss points. For demonstrating the feasibility of the new topology optimization approach, three academic examples are presented and discussed. As a result, the developed sensitivity-based algorithm is able to find usable flexible design concepts with a nearly discrete 0 − 1 density distribution for these examples.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adik Yadao ◽  
R. S. Hingole

Today’s car is one of the most important things in everyone’s life .Every person wants to have his or her own car but the question that arises in each buyer’s mind is whether the vehicle is safe enough to spend so much of money so it is the responsibility of an mechanical engineer to make the vehical comfortable and at the Same time safer. Now a days automakers are coming with various energy absorbing devices such as crush box, door beams etc. this energy absorbing device s prove to be very useful in reducing the amount force that is being transmitted to the occupant. In this we are using impact energy absorber in efficient manner as compare to earlier. The various steps involved in this project starting from developing the cad model of this inner impact energy absorber using the CAD software CATIA V5 R19. Then pre-processing is carried out in HYPERMESH 11.0 which includes assigning material, properties, boundary conditions such as contacts, constraints etc. LS-DYNA971 is used as a solver and LS-POST is used for the post processing and results obtained are compared to the standards. By carrying out this idea it has been observed that there is a considerable amount of energy that is being absorbed by this energy-absorbing device. Along with this energy absorption, the intrusion in passenger compartment is also reduced by considerable amount. So for safer and comfortable car with inner impact energy absorber is one of the best options available. This will get implement by this research work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 713 ◽  
pp. 321-324
Author(s):  
A. de Luca ◽  
Giuseppe Lamanna ◽  
Raffaele Sepe ◽  
Alessandro Soprano

Among several problems which might affect the passenger safety during an accidental crash event, the deceleration pulse is one of the most critical. For this reason vehicles are designed to convert the Kinetic Energy occurring in an impact in plastic deformation and to spread the loads due to such events through designed structural load paths. An important role in the kinetic energy absorbing at high velocities is played by the energy absorbers. The energy absorption capability of a crashworthy element or system is largely affected by material properties and structural design. This work deals with a numerical investigation on the energy absorbing capability of a new concept of energy absorber made out of the combination of metal parts and carbon composite materials. A numerical investigation on the parameters which increase the crash performance as well as decrease the weight of such device has been presented in this paper.


2018 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhe Chen ◽  
Tonghao Wu ◽  
Guodong Nian ◽  
Yejie Shan ◽  
Xueya Liang ◽  
...  

Energy absorption structures are widely used in many scenarios. Thin-walled members have been heavily employed to absorb impact energy. This paper presents a novel, Ron Resch origami pattern inspired energy absorption structure. Experimental characterization and numerical simulations were conducted to study the energy absorption of this structure. The results show a new collapse mode in terms of energy absorption featuring multiple plastic hinge lines, which lead to the peak force reduction and larger effective stroke, as compared with the classical honeycomb structure. Overall, the Ron Resch origami-inspired structure and the classical honeycomb structure are quite complementary as energy absorption structures.


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