Development and assessment of alternative designs for side impact beam

Abstract

Side collisions are the second most important cause of death and injury in traffic accidents. Such collisions are riskier than frontal collisions as there are no unique bumpers to absorb the impacts and the space between the passenger and the door is very limited. Therefore, one of the most studied collision types in vehicle safety research is side collisions. Passenger safety is ensured by the A, B, C-Pillar and the side impact beam. This study aims to design and test a composite side door impact beam with a higher strength/weight ratio against impacts. For this purpose, side impact beam design alternatives were created from glass fiber reinforced polymer composite and carbon fiber polymer composite materials, and the samples were tested to obtain maximum force, maximum stress, force/weight ratio, stress/weight ratio, energy absorption ability, specific energy absorption, cost, and mass results. Then, the effectiveness of the designed side impact beams was discussed by comparing the results obtained from the quasi-static compression tests. The study results show that an optimum design can be suggested by evaluating such structural elements in terms of many parameters and establishing trade-off relations between the parameters.