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This paper describes a lightweight magnesium intensive automobile body structure concept developed at DaimlerChrysler to support a high fuel-efficiency vehicle project. This body structure resulted in more than 40% weight reduction over a conventional steel structure while achieving significantly improved structural performance as evaluated through CAE simulations. A business case analysis was conducted and showed promising results. One concept vehicle was built for the purpose of demonstrating concept feasibility. The paper also identifies areas for further development to enable such a vehicle to become a production reality at a later time.

The automobile industry is seeing an increased need for the application of plastics and their derivatives in various forms such as fiber reinforced plastics, in the design and manufacture of various automotive structural components, to reduce weight, cost and improve fuel efficiency. A lot of effort is being directed at the development of structural plastics, to meet specific automotive requirements such as stiffness, safety, strength, durability and environmental standards and recyclability. This paper presents the many different conceptual cross sections being evaluated during the development of fiber reinforced plastic automotive cross sections. The concepts consists of foam filling of the fiber reinforced plastic cross sections with light weight metal or composite reinforcements. The metal reinforcement is in the form of lightweight metallic tubes. The composite reinforcement is in the form of a carbon fiber bundle.

With the increased motivation for high fuel efficiency, most automotive research and development efforts are being directed at reducing the weight of an automobile without sacrificing the performance related to safety, durability and NVH. Body structure is one of the viable components for weight reduction. Therefore, use of composites, in particular fiber reinforced plastics are seen as a viable alternative to metals to reduce body weight with the lowest penalty on performance and cost. One could expect future vehicles to be a combination of light weight metals and non metals involving a lot of adhesively bonded interfaces. Structural analysis of these bonded joints subjected to mechanical loads is essential. However, since fiber reinforced plastics are subject to temperature effects, an analysis of structure involving such adhesively bonded materials should account not only for mechanical loading effects but also for the thermal loading effects.