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Automotive steering wheels, which play an important role as a human machine interface, are evolving over time with numerous integrations and innovations. Thermoplastic steering wheel, one of the innovations in recent times, offers significant reduction in mass along with part integration and styling flexibility and is an excellent replacement to traditional metal armature steering wheels. Typical steering wheels need to meet many performance requirements before they enter production. With the advancement of computational mechanics and increase in computational capabilities, it has become much easier to evaluate and optimize steering wheel performance in different ways. Instead of manufacturing and running prototype tests, steering wheel designs can be modeled and optimized virtually in various scenarios using standard finite element analysis technique, thus facilitating faster development cycle.

High repair cost and the subsequent increase in insurance cost in a highly competitive automobile market have forced every automobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to comply with the FMVSS and ECE-42 regulatory requirements of low-speed vehicle damageability. Although, the terminologies used are different, similar regulatory requirements also exist in Asia-pacific region. At the rear side, reducing the damage to expensive vehicle components in a low-speed pendulum impact or a low-speed barrier impact can attain a good rating for low-speed vehicle damageability. This paper focuses on a detailed study of various lightweight plastic rear beam designs and their effectiveness in reducing the damage to the vehicle during low-speed vehicle-to-vehicle collision or vehicle to barrier collision.