Alternative lightweight materials and component manufacturing technologies for vehicle frontal bumper beam

One of the vehicle subsystem where large advantage is expected in lightweight design is the bumper subsystems. Bumper subsystems are designed to prevent or reduce physical damage to the front or rear ends of passenger motor vehicles during collusion. In this paper, detail design aspects and method of analysis with particular reference to the application of composite materials to automotive front bumper subsystem, crash box and bumper beam. Innovative design of integrated crash box and bumper beam has been considered for better crashworthiness; the proposed solution results to be of great interest also from the points of view of subassembly cost and effective production process. Three materials have been characterized under quasi static and impact tests for this bumper beam application; GMT, GMTex, and GMT-UD. Major parameters, such as impact energy, peak load, crash resistance, energy absorption and stiffness have been taken as evaluation criteria to compare the proposed materials solutions with pultruded and steel solutions. Finally, the results predicted by the finite element analysis have been evaluated and interpreted in comparison with other existing solutions to put in evidence the effectiveness of the proposed innovative materials and design concept solutions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.