AS CARS GET SMALLER, DESIGNING FOR SAFETY GETS TOUGHER

Maintaining strength, stiffness, and crashworthiness properties of cars while simultaneously reducing their size and weight is a major challenge facing automobile manufacturers today. To meet this challenge, they are turning increasingly to improved and new materials that are stronger and lighter; to structural optimization techniques that use computers to determine the lightest possible structures for cars; and to improved crash testing, either simulated or real. With structural crashworthiness, the structure is designed to undergo only one loading. That is, the structure is sacrificed during an accident or collision to save the occupants and cargo. This means that the mechanical properties during both the elastic and plastic range of the material are of major concern to the structural design engineer. Materials used in the front and rear structures must provide excellent energy absorption throughout the complete deformation of the vehicle. On the other hand, materials used in the passenger compartment structure must exhibit high strength properties with a somewhat more limited range of deformation and with correspondingly less emphasis on their energy absorption properties. High-strength steel grades, up to eight times stronger than mild carbon steels, are used to produce thinner, lighter components.

  • Availability:
  • Corporate Authors:

    American Society of Mechanical Engineers

    Two Park Avenue
    New York, NY  United States  10016-5990
  • Publication Date: 1983-10

Media Info

  • Features: References;
  • Pagination: p. 32-39
  • Serial:
    • Mechanical Engineering
    • Volume: 105
    • Issue Number: 10
    • Publisher: American Society of Mechanical Engineers
    • ISSN: 0025-6501

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00385852
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Engineering Index
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jun 28 1984 12:00AM