COLLAPSE CHARACTERISTICS OF ALUMINUM EXTRUSIONS FILLED WITH STRUCTURAL FOAM FOR SPACE FRAME VEHICLES

摘要

For improving high-safety, convenience, and ride comfort, the automotive design suffers from radical increase of the weight, the recycling-related rules, regulations on the waste gas, and environmental protection of the resources. Among them, it is well known that the weight increase is the most critical. Thus, in order to minimize the weight of the body-in-white that takes up 20-30% of the whole weight of the automobile, most automotive manufacturers have attempted to develop the aluminum intensive body-in-white using aluminum space frames. In this research, the crush test and simulation for aluminum extrusions are performed to evaluate the collapse characteristics of that light weighted material. Also, the same test and simulation was done for aluminum extrusions filled with structural foam. Then, these results are analyzed and compared. From these studies, the effectiveness of structural foam is evaluated in improving automotive crashworthiness. Finally, the design strategy and guideline of the structural form are suggested in order to improve the crashworthiness for aluminum space frame in the vehicle.