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Automotive body structures are developed to meet vehicle performance requirements primarily based on ride and handling, crashworthiness, and noise level targets. The body is made of a multitude of sheet metal stampings welded together. Other closures such as fenders, hood, doors and trunk lid are developed to match body interfaces, to contribute and participate in the overall vehicle response, and to meet the sub-system and system structural requirements. In order to improve performance and achieve weight reduction of the overall vehicle steel structure, new polymeric materials and treatment strategies are available to body structural engineers to optimize the response of the vehicle and to tune vehicle performance to meet specified functional requirements. If early integrated to the design cycle, these materials help not only improve the structural body response, but also decrease the weight of the integrated body structure.

Stability and structural integrity are extremely important in the design of a vehicle. Structural foams, when used to fill body cavities and joints, can greatly improve the stiffness of the vehicle, and provide additional acoustical and structural benefits. This study involves modal testing and finite element analysis on a sports utility vehicle to understand the effect of structural foam on modal behavior. The modal analysis studies are performed on this vehicle to investigate the dynamic characteristics, joint stiffness and overall body behavior. A design of experiments (DOE) study was performed to understand how the foam's density and placement in the body influences vehicle stiffness. Prior to the design of experiments, a design sensitivity analysis (DSA) was done to identify the sensitive joints in the body structure and to minimize the number of design variables in the DOE study.

This paper investigates the sensitivities of glass bonding adhesives to the dynamic characteristics of automotive body structures. Experimental modal analysis was conducted to study the damping, response amplitude, and stiffness of different adhesives to a door assembly and a vehicle body. Three different glass bonding adhesives were used in this study. Performance advantages of using these adhesives are given.