Analysis of composite car bumper reinforcement

Abstract

The presented work summarizes the present state of car passive safety testing according to European methodologies. The main objective is to analysis a bumper reinforcement made of composite materials. The bumper is tested according to RCAR (Research Council for Automobile Repairs) methodology using numerical simulation. Individual proposed variants are compared with the existing steel construction which does not comply with manufacturers specifications. The PAM-Crash software is used for the simulation. The numerical model is using shell elements and the Ladeveze model for the description of behaviour of composite materials. The methodology for the set-up of the numerical model in PAM-crash is firstly validated by comparison of experiment and analytical results.