Lightweight design of B-pillar with TRB concept considering crashworthiness
Paper in proceeding, 2012

Lightweight and crashworthiness are two crucial aspects of automobile design. The purpose of this study is to minimize the weight of the B-pillar without compromising the safety performance for the car occupants in side collisions and roof crush. For the purpose a finite element model was developed for modeling of a passenger car in side collision and roof crush. The optimization of the B-pillar was carried out by using tailor rolled blanks (TRB) concept under the constraint of vehicle side impact and roof crush. An integrated approach is applied using uniform design, finite element method, Kriging approximation and genetic algorithm. The B-pillar intrusion, intrusion velocity and the resistant force of roof crush were defined as constraint for determination of the thickness of the B-pillar. Finally, two types of structure TRB I and TRB II are proposed for lightweight design. The results indicated that the weight of the B-pillar can be reduced by 36.43% and 31.57% respectively, while fulfilling the safety requirements.

lightweight

trb

optimization

roof crush

side impact

Author

Z. Yang

Hunan University

Q. Peng

Hunan University

Jikuang Yang

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Vehicle Safety

2012 3rd International Conference on Digital Manufacturing and Automation, ICDMA 2012. Guilin, Guangxi, 31 July - 2 August 2012

510-513
978-076954772-5 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

DOI

10.1109/ICDMA.2012.121

ISBN

978-076954772-5

More information

Created

10/8/2017