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Understanding the lightweighting potential of materials is important in making strategic decisions for material selection for a new vehicle program. Frequently benchmarking is done to support these decisions by selecting a reference vehicle which is believed to be mass efficient, then using the teardown mass data to set targets for the vehicle under design. In this work, rather then considering a single benchmark vehicle or a small set of vehicles, we looked at a large sample of vehicles over a range of sizes and segments (approximately 200 vehicles). Statistical methods were used to identify mass drivers for each subsystem. Mass drivers are the attributes of the vehicle and subsystem which determine subsystem mass. Understanding mass-drivers allows comparisons across vehicle size, segments, and materials. Next, we identified those vehicles which had subsystems which were much lighter than the average after adjusting for mass drivers. This set was defined as mass-efficient designs.

This book provides readers with a solid understanding of the principles of automobile body structural design, illustrating the effect of changing design parameters on the behavior of automobile body structural elements. Emphasizing simple models of the behavior of body structural systems rather than complex mathematical models, the book looks at the best way to shape a structural element to achieve a desired function, why structures behave in certain ways, and how to improve performance.