Numerical investigation of the effect of different poly angles on crashworthiness behavior of hat shape energy absorbers

Car body light weighting and crashworthiness are two important objectives of car design and improvement. Composite materials are extensively used in the industries because of their specific properties. Nowadays, hat sections are used in road vehicles to absorb side impacts. On the other hand, weight reduction has dominantly been considered in the automotive industry to reduce the fuel consumption. This paper presents a numerical study on hat-sections made from fiber glass-polyester under quasi static and impact loadings. In this research effects of different poly angles on the crushing behavior of the hat shape structure and the value of absorbed energy of this structure are investigated. The specimen is investigated by the finite element method using ABAQUS software. There the best results are presented.The numerical results unveil some important facts about using composite materials in hat shape energy absorbers and also show that through the changes of poly angles, the energy absorption of hat shape structures can change.

Keywords:

Poly angles , Crashworthiness , Composite , Hat-shape