A method to reduce design complexity of automotive composite structures with respect to crashworthiness

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Composites in automotive structures show great promise to further improve vehicle crashworthiness. However, designing automotive structures for crash with advanced composite materials is challenging. The large amount of design parameters for laminated composites, the complex non-linear material behavior and the discontinuous design space in vehicle design, such for crashworthiness, are the main contributors to this challenge. In this paper, we propose a new design strategy to address this and integrate advanced laminated composite materials in automotive design for crashworthiness. First a computationally efficient physical surrogate is introduced to predict the structural validity of the design options and filter the design space. Secondly a method is introduced which uses Sobol decomposition to derive a design parameter importance hierarchy. Thirdly the physical surrogate is used to derive parameter bounds to increase robustness. A typical S-rail benchmark has been developed to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method. Finally the method provides for a reduced and robust design space which may help to decrease early development time.Publisher PDF not permitted, item withdraw

Development of Through-Thickness Reinforcement in Advanced Composites Incorporating Rigid Cellular Foams

This paper presents a method of joining carbon-fibre plies and rigid cellular foam core with stitching for producing light-weight composite structures. After resin infusion and consolidation, the stitched sandwich panel exhibits superior damage tolerance as well as improved transverse properties due to the presence of through-thickness fibre reinforcement. First part of the paper deals with the conceptual development of a multi-needle stitching machine for rigid foams. A needle penetration model for computing the penetration forces has been reported - there is a good agreement between the experimental and theoretical penetration force-displacement curves. A number of sandwich panels with orthogonal and bias stitch orientations have been developed and examined for stitch quality with the aid of X-ray tomography. The paper also presents results from quasi-static indentation, three-point bending and transverse compression tests, on both the stitched and unstitched sandwich panels. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V