The paper addresses the applicability importance of Fiber Reinforced Plastics (FRP) in automotive industry. Increased usage of FRP directly influences the car weight reduction and, consequently, gas emissions. An example is presented for the solution of reducing the total weight of a passenger car using a local design solution, which comprises a redesign of a side- door impact beam made of Twintex. The Finite Element Method (FEM) was used for computational analyses of behaviour of side-door impact beam under loading with aim to determine its capacity of impact energy absorption in relation to a standard steel impact beam. Different stacking sequences of composite beam were analysed with intention to find the most suitable solution in terms of strength, stiffness, absorbed energy and weight reduction. Computational analyses have shown that appropriately stacked Twintex impact beam has adequate load-carrying capacities and that it absorbs more strain energy as its steel equivalent. By following the criteria for maintaining the same stiffness, it is shown that employment of the Twintex composite leads to an overall increase of the beam dimensions. Nonetheless, a 10% weight reduction is achieved with respect to steel.
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