Author : A.Siva Kumar , G.Himabindu , M.Sankar Raman and K.Vijaya Kumar Reddy

Real time Crash testing and the Simulation of FE model are the most important sources of checking the safety of the car. The main aim of this study is for designing a crush box for different segment cars and checking its performance through numerical simulation. The companies of Insurance and the RCAR council requires the idea or technology for reducing the cost of repair and the same time improving the safety of the occupant or the passenger in the car during the Low speed impact. For reducing the cost of repair in case of Low speed crash, a special device is needed to absorb the energy caused by impact, which is called as Crush box assembly. The Crush Box is a thin-walled structure attached between the vehicle bumper structure and the side rail. The need of the Crush box is quite most important for absorbing the energy of impact. In this study, the process for crush box design development to improve the energy of absorption is proposed. The proposed process has two steps. Firstly experimental tests and numerical analysis on crush box cross sections were carried out in order to better understand their behavior and model them properly. Secondly, adding additional reinforcement and some foam types in order to satisfy different segment cars, where the difference between the segments will be the mass. The simulation of the crash itself was done by means of the Ls-Dyna code. The optimized design of crush box will be designed which should absorb more energy during RCAR Crash performance. According to the RCAR rule, the simulation at low speed impact of 16km/h was carried out to evaluate the crashworthiness of the car.

Keywords: Polymer Matrix Composites, Injection Moulding, Flexural Strength, Hardness.

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)