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A cast magnesium subframe was designed and manufactured for a C Class sedan to reduce weight and improve vehicle fuel economy. The magnesium subframe achieved 5 kg (32%) weight reduction from the equivalent steel subframe and met all the required structural performance targets. All the joints of the magnesium subframe were tested for bolt load retention. The tests were conducted with a temperature profile of 100°C to -30°C designed to investigate the creep behavior of the selected magnesium alloy AE44 under high stress.

With the continuing challenges of future fuel economy targets carbon fiber composite materials are one facet of a lightweighting strategy to enable reduced fuel consumption. In general, use of lightweight materials such as carbon fiber composites in vehicle design generates vehicle NVH performance degradation. To address this potential issue at the design phase, there is a need to develop correlated CAE models for carbon fiber vehicle parts to evaluate the NVH impact of carbon fiber composite material use in vehicle design. To develop correlated CAE models for lightweight vehicle design with the use of carbon fiber composite vehicle body parts, an experimental study was conducted to determine the material and NVH characteristics of the carbon fiber composite materials. In this paper, the damping properties and NVH modal analysis results for structural carbon fiber thermoset composite panels and body parts (B-pillar upper insert and B-pillar lower insert) is presented.