Increasing the impact resistance properties of any transport vehicle is a real engineering challenge. This challenge is addressed in this paper by proposing a high-performing structural solution. Hence, the performance, in terms of improvement of the energy absorbing characteristics and the reduction of the peak accelerations, of highly efficient shock absorbers integrated in key locations of a minibus chassis have been assessed by means of numerical crash simulations. The high efficiency of the proposed damping system has been achieved by improving the current design and manufacturing process of the state-of-the-art shock absorbers. Indeed, the proposed passive safety system is composed of additive manufactured, hybrid polymer/composite (Polypropylene/Composite Fibres Reinforced Polymers—PP/CFRP) shock absorbers. The resulting hybrid component combines the high stiffness-to-mass and strength-to-mass ratios characteristic of the composites with the capability of the PP to dissipate energy by plastic deformation. Moreover, thanks to the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique, low-mass and low-volume highly-efficient shock-absorbing sandwich structures can be designed and manufactured. The use of high-efficiency additively manufactured sandwich shock absorbers has been demonstrated as an effective way to improve the passive safety of passengers, achieving a reduction in the peak of the reaction force and energy absorbed in the safety cage of the chassis’ structure, respectively, up to up to 30 kN and 25%.
Vehicle frames can be considered the main stiffening component being, at the same time, functional hubs for all the other components assembly. Frames' main goal is to absorb the static and dynamic loads acting on the vehicle, ensuring passengers' safety. In this paper a feasibility study on an innovative modular frame concept is presented. An attempt has been made to design a modular frame by using customized additive manufacturable steel joints. Actually, standard frame structures are manufactured by welding separated tubes, making access to some internal areas of the vehicle very difficult where not impossible. Consequently, some maintenance operations become also challenging. The modular configuration solves these maintenance problems enabling, at the same time, to start thinking about multi-purposes vehicle configurations, which can be switched by simply changing the modules connected to a central cell. Reinforced panels have been, also, integrated into the modular frame, which contribute to torsional stiffness with an overall mass reduction. The concept of a modular frame with collaborating reinforced panels, has been preliminary demonstrated by means of numerical simulations within the ABAQUS FEM environment. Certification torsional loads have been applied to the modular reinforced frame and the obtained numerical results contributed to prove the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed design.
Thanks to the introduction of high-performance composite materials, 'metal replacement' approaches are successfully gaining ground even in the most challenging engineering applications. Among these, one of the most recent application challenges is improving the driving range of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) by adopting innovative materials to lighten the mass of structural components, thus reducing energy requirements and enabling the use of smaller and less expensive batteries. Hence, in the present work, the employment of laminated composite panels in an electric minibus chassis is investigated as an effective way to reduce the global mass of the chassis’ structure and, at the same time, to increase its structural performances in terms of torsional stiffness and crashworthiness. By replacing specific steel tubulars with carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminated composite structures, different chassis configurations were numerically developed and detailed simulations to compare both masses and mechanical responses were carried out. The paper proves that with this approach it is possible to lighten the chassis up to 9%, while achieving a 7% increase in torsional stiffness and a 9% increase in Specific Energy Absorption (SEA).
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