INVESTIGATION OF THE FRONT DEFORMATION ZONE OF A PASSENGER VEHICLE

Abstract

Passive safety of vehicles is one of the most important tasks of modern automotive engineering. During a collision, a large part of the vehicle's kinetic energy must be absorbed in the deformation zones to reduce the loads transmitted to the passenger compartment. An energy-absorbing element is a component of a vehicle's safety system used to convert kinetic energy into another form of energy, which is dissipated through plastic deformation. The article examines the effect of different materials and different shapes of beams on the energy absorption of the deformation zone of a vehicle during an impact. The original thin-walled deformation beam of a vehicle was chosen as the object of research. Numerical modelling was performed using the "Ansys Explicit Dynamics" module. Geometric models of beams were created in the SolidWorks modelling environment. The created three-dimensional geometric models were exported and loaded into the ANSYS Mechanical software environment, where the main modelling parameters were determined. During the study, reaction forces, absorbed energy, deformation course and calculated specific energy (SEA) were evaluated. The results obtained showed that the different shape of the beam has a significant impact on the nature of energy absorption and deformation uniformity. It was also found that lighter materials, such as carbon fibre and magnesium, are characterized by higher values of specific absorbed energy, although the absolute absorbed energy is in some cases lower than in steel structures. From the conducted study, it can be concluded that the efficiency of the design of deformation zones is determined not only by the mechanical properties of the material used, but also by the geometric shape of the structure. Proper selection of the shape and material of the beam can improve the efficiency of energy absorption and reduce the mass of the vehicle structure.