Use of high strength steel sheet for lightweight and crashworthy car body

Car body lightweighting and crashworthiness are two important objectives of car body design and improvement. In order to reduce a car's weight without impairment of crashworthiness, a method of body parts' material replacement from mild steel sheet to high strength steel sheet of reduced depth is brought forward. The depth reducing equation is drawn from mechanical analysis and verified by finite element simulation of body parts crashing into a rigid wall. The depth of several main parts for impact energy absorption is reduced according to the equation brought forward in this paper and the simulation results of the car crash into a rigid wall show that the method presented in this paper is valid. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.