CRASHWORTHINESS EVALUATION OF COMPOSITE VEHICLE SIDE DOOR BASED ON DUMMY RESPONSE

This paper addresses the crashworthiness design aspects and method of analysis that should be used with particular reference to the application of composite materials to automotive front door design. The proposal is to substitute the current steel solution, with a composite material one. The applied design criteria is the equal stiffness. Major constraints are crash resistance and stiffness of door panels and impact beam against side crash, according to existing standards. Finally, the results predicted by the finite element analysis are evaluated and interpreted on the bases of dummy response to insight the effectiveness of the proposed solution. The results revealed that a properly designed composite door could be better from protecting occupant point view during car side crash impact, with a decrement of the total weight of about 6.7 kg, that is 39% of the steel solution.