Development Of Fiber-Reinforced Epoxy Composite Energy Absorber For Automotive Bumper System

Bumper is an important safety component in a vehicle. Approximately 70% of damage claim occurred from low speed impact. In a number of European countries, pedestrians contribute 12-35% of the number of severely injured or killed victims of road traffic accidents. The bumper absorber plays an important role in energy absorption in automotive bumper system. There are two types of energy absorber in modern car. The first one is for low impact and another one for crashworthiness impact. In the case of low impact test energy absorption, it normally uses foam as an absorber which in some material cases is harmful and need more equipment for production also there are uncompleted recovery after compression. Fiber reinforced polymer composite material offers essential characteristics such as weight reduction, design and manufacturing flexibility and safety improvement. In this research the above-mentioned parameters and the inherent characteristics of fiber reinforced polymer composite material have been used in designing polymer composite parts as an energy absorber in automotive bumper system. In developing the reinforced polymer composite absorber the work of Neopolen_P (2006) and AISI (2004) were followed as guides with some modifications. A series of reinforced composite absorber was installed between fascia and beam in place of a series of expanded polypropylene (EPP) absorber as was used by Neopolen_P (2006). The finite element analysis and experimental work were carried out to investigate the effect of energy absorption analysis of the elliptical shape of the composite material. The simulation was performed using a commercially available finite element software package (LUSAS). It is found the ratio 150mm over 75 mm is suitable and the fiber orientation [0],[90] are the best among [0], [10], [20], [30], [40], [45], [50], [60], [70], [80], and [90] orientations. The experimental work had been carried out to examine the effects of composite elliptical absorber on energy absorption behavior subjected to quasi-static compressive load. The composite elliptical absorber was fabricated from E- glass and carbon fiber with the orientation of [0, 90], [0, 45,-45, 0] and [45, 0, 90]s. The load and accumulative energy versus displacement were tested under compressive quasistatic loading using the universal hydraulic testing machine (Instron 8500) and the results were finally compared with FEA results. It can be concluded that the composite absorber is useful in case of leg-form impact in car bumper and repeated compression recovery is better than expanded polypropylene (EPP) material and the equipment for manufacturing and number of parts are lower than EPP absorber. It can be used in different cars with various spaces by small changing in production equipment.

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