OPTIMIZATION OF CAR BUMPER

INTRODUCTION

CAR BUMPERS:
• In automobiles, a bumper is the front-most or rear-most part, designed to
allow the car to sustain an impact without damage to the vehicle's safety
systems. They are not capable of reducing injury to vehicle occupants in high-
speed impacts, but are increasingly being designed to mitigate
injury to pedestrians struck by cars.
• The car bumper is designed to prevent or reduce physical damage to the front
and rear ends of passenger motor vehicles in low-speed collisions.
• In most jurisdictions, bumpers are legally required on all vehicles. The height
and placement of bumpers may be legally specified as well, to ensure that
when vehicles of different speed are in an accident.
• Designing the bumper with the focus on an improvement aspect is very
important in the automotive industry. The goals are to increase the
performance of the bumper and also to find the solution to reduce the cost of
the bumper hence able to reduce the production cost.
• This project intention is to design an improved of front car bumper and to
find the solution for the problem of high cost and the replacing cost for
the front bumper and lastly emphasizing the cost reducing aspect.
• Different materials can be used in production of car bumpers:
1. PVC
2. Plastic-Polycarbonate (Molded)
3. Plastic-Nylon Type 6/6
4. Plastic ABS (Molded).
5. AISI E 52100 Steel
 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

• Nowadays the part cost for front bumper is still high and the cost for
replacing is quite expensive especially if surrounding area or part also
damaged.
• Many part that make up a bumper system, involving a lot of material and
processes there for the manufacturer difficult to reduce the price.
Customer also blame to the manufacture that the bumper easily to
damage although the collision was slow.
• The material of the bumper should be analyzed to find the alternative
material that can improve the toughness.
 OBJECTIVE

The method have been employed was study the front bumper system,
design and analyze the alternative front bumper using CAD software. And
to achieve the objective of the project, the following activities are
performed:
1. To analyze on mechanical properties focus on stress analysis.
2. Benchmark the current front car bumper design (MARUTI 800)
3. To modeling the actual dimension of the car bumper into the Solid
Work software and analyze between the current design and the
alternative design.
4. Perform CAE simulation to the alternative bumper.
 LITERATURE REVIEW

1. A good design of car bumper must provide safety for passengers and should
have low weight (Marzbanrad et al., 2009). Beside the role of safety, fuel
efficiency and emission gas regulations are being more important which
encourage manufacturer to reduce the weight of passenger cars
(Hosseinzadeh et al., 2005).
2. It is not a safety feature intended to prevent or mitigate injury severity to
occupants in the passenger cars. Bumpers are designed to protect the hood,
trunk, grille, fuel, exhaust and cooling system as well as safety related
equipment such as parking lights, headlamps and taillights in low speed
collisions (Status Report,Vol 4, No 2, IIHS, 2007).
3. Generally, a bumper is attached to either end of a vehicle to absorb impact in
a collision, thereby protecting passenger. As shown in figure 1, a conventional
bumper system comprises a bumper cover 1 defining an outer appearance of
the bumper system, 6 an energy absorber 2 formed of an elastic material
such a polypropylene foam body or an urethane foam body to absorb energy,
an impact beam for supporting the energy absorber 2, and a stay 4 for
connecting the impact beam 3 to a vehicle body (Won-JunChoi, 2003).
4. Many researchers have studied the four main variables during crash
simulation and analysis (Kim, 2008; Marzbanrad et al.,
2009;Hosseinzadeh et al., 2005). The first variable studied is the material.
It has been exposed in this research as a substitution in order to lower
part weights and define whether the material can affect the impact of
collision or not. In this section, the effect of modulus of elasticity and yield
strength on impact behavior of bumper beam was investigated. Thickness
is the second variable that has been studied in order to relate between
bumper and thickness that can affect the impact of collision.
5.Bumper design has focused on material and structure. Andersson et al.
(2002) investigated the applicability of stainless steel for crash-absorbing
bumpers to increase crash performance in automotive vehicles.
 METHODOLOGY

Automotive bumper System .Photo courtesy :Neoplen ,2006

• The simulation of a bumper is characterized by impact modelling using Abaqus
6.9 according to the speed that is 13.3 m sec-1 (48 km h-1) given in order to
analyse the results. This speed is according to regulations of Federal Motor
Vehicle Safety Standards, FMVSS 208- Occupant Crash Protection whereby the
purpose and scope of this standard specifies requirements to afford impact
protection for passengers.
• the three types of material were selected that are relevant to be applied to
the front bumper beam. The materials consist of Expanded Polypropylene
(EPP), Glass Mat Thermoplastics (GMT) and Sheet Molding Compound (SMC).
• These materials were studied by impact modelling to determine the kinetic
energy, potential energy and strain energy. The selected materials are
compared to each other to find the best material with highest material
strength and structure. Simulation using Finite Element Analysis software,
which is ABAQUS was conducted. The results showed that a modified SMC
bumper can reduce the impact of collision with higher performance and was
suggested to replace GMT and EPP. The duration taken for SMC to deflect the
impact was the shortest compared to GMT and EPP The findings also showed
that EPP cannot totally absorb the energy and reduce the impact of collision.
 REFERENCES

1. Marzbanrad, J., M. Alijanpour and M.S. Kiasat, 2009. Design and analysis
of automotive bumper beam in low speed frontal crashes. Thin-Walled
Struct., 47: 902-911.
2. Hosseinzadeh, R., M. Shokrieh and L.B. Lessard, 2005. Parametric study
of automotive composite bumper beams subjected to low-velocity
impacts. J. Composite Struct., 68: 419-427.