A Material Substitute for Column A-Pole of LCV by Using Composite Aluminium with reinforced Glass fiber

Abstract

Automobile industry is always in search to find an alternative methodology to implement the continuous changes in passenger car norms and customer expectations. Weight is main factor of the vehicle which has dominant effect on emission, performance and efficiency of the vehicle. Now day’s use of Mild Steel is reduced with light weight materials like Aluminium and its alloys, Glass fiber, Plastic and others. The work has been carried out to decrease the weight of the A-Pole reinforcement of the passenger car SUV class and to fulfill the vibration requirement. A traditional material Mild Steel is replaced by composite of Glass fiber with Aluminium reinforced. Project executed in three stages. At initial stage present geometry details are reverse engineered like its dimensions and thickness. Continued by setting base line targets for new material by FEA method for vibration and linear static analysis. Correlation of light weight structure is achieved with different iterations with help of tools like ANSA, Hypergraph Metapost, Hypermesh, Optistruct and Nastran. Results comparison shows that the Aluminium with reinforced glass fiber reduces the mass of A-Pole by 30% by mechanical strength.

Keywords – Glass fiber,A-Pole, BIW SUV, Vibration analysis, linear static analysis, FEA Methodology, Weight reduction.