Investigation of the crash boxes Light weighting with syntactic foams by the finite element analysis

Abstract

Light-weighting is a new scope in the automotive industry to accommodate new emission regulations. The parts produced with conventional metallic materials are replaced with parts produced by using light weight or high strength materials, to obtain light weighted equivalents of the same strength. Foam core sandwich structures, high strength steels, composite materials are the most used alternative materials. Syntactic foams that show outstanding performance in case of high-speed collisions have an excellent utility as energy absorbers in vehicle crash boxes. Syntactic foams are modeled in crash boxes at various filling rates and filling patterns in the context of this study. As results of the FEM analyses, it is observed that syntactic foams have excellent crash performance, as well as weight-reducing effect in vehicle crash boxes.