Design optimisation of composite bumper beam with variable cross-sections for automotive vehicle

Considering vehicle crash safety, gas emission and the improvement in the energy efficiency, carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite materials have been increasingly used in automotive applications. Bumper beam, as a main structural component of automobile bumper subsystem, is expected to p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of crashworthiness 2017-07, Vol.22 (4), p.365-376
Main Authors: Zhu, Guohua, Wang, Zhen, Cheng, Aiguo, Li, Guangyao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automobile safety
Automotive engineering
Automotive parts
Bumper beam
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics
carbon fibre reinforced composite
Composite materials
Computer simulation
Crashworthiness
Cross-sections
Design
Design optimization
Energy efficiency
Energy management
Fiber composites
finite element simulation
Fuel consumption
Impact strength
Lightweight
Multiple objective analysis
optimal design
Plastics
Polymer matrix composites
Power efficiency
Safety
Stiffness
Velocity
Weight reduction
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Summary:Considering vehicle crash safety, gas emission and the improvement in the energy efficiency, carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite materials have been increasingly used in automotive applications. Bumper beam, as a main structural component of automobile bumper subsystem, is expected to protect occupants and its nearby components. It is an effective way to develop the bumper beam using CFRP to meet higher requirements of crash safety and lightweight. In this study, a stiffness degraded model is proposed to predict low-velocity impact behavior of CFRP bumper beam under two different loading conditions. Based on the simulation results, a novel design scheme of CFRP bumper beam with variable cross-sections is proposed to further improve material utilization. Finally, an optimization procedure incorporating the RBF modeling technique and NSGA-II algorithm was implemented to obtain the multi-objective optimal design. The results yielded from the optimization demonstrate that the optimized bumper beam with variable cross-sections is superior to its uniform counterpart in lightweight and crashworthiness and consequently is recommended as a better approach to replace the conventional metallic bumper beam.
ISSN:1358-8265
1754-2111
DOI:10.1080/13588265.2016.1267552