Impact Behavior and Optimum Design of Cfrp/al Hybrid Beam in Side Collision of Automobiles

INTRODUCTION Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) laminates are used in various industrial fields because they have excellent properties in the specific strength and specific stiffness. The CFRP has a potential of weight reduction in the automotive structure which can contribute to the improvement of mileage as well as the reduction of carbon dioxide. On the other hand, the safety issue in case of collision should be also clarified when employing the CFRP as automotive structures. In this paper, hybrid beam which consisted of an Al Alloy and CFRP were examined by both experiments and FEM as a candidate to replace the conventional steel guarder beam used inside the automotive door. The experimental relations of impact loading to the displacement for the hybrid beam showed good agreement with those from FEM results. These results show that the numerical FEM method developed here is useful for estimating the impact behaviour of Al guarder beams reinforced with CFRP layers.