Demands for ever increasing efficiency of automotive crash analysis have continued to rise in the drive to reduce automotive development costs. When major design changes are required to satisfy product performance late in the development process, significant cost and time are required to implement them. To alleviate this, automotive manufacturers have adopted the concept of "front-loading" to identify problems early-on in the development process.
In this study, the numerical modelling of a thick-walled aluminium extrusion which serves as a protective structure for battery trays in electric vehicles was studied. The thick-walled profile was modelled in a pole-crushing test. For this application, four aluminium alloys of different strength were considered: AA6063, AA6082, AA6005 air-cooled and AA6005 water-cooled. Shell elements proved to be inadequate in accurately describing the mechanical behaviour of thick-walled extrusions. Differences in the deformation mode and the computed force were observed between shell and solid models. Parametric studies were performed to evaluate the effect of fracture model, element formulation, contact formulation, and friction coefficient.
Wheels play a critical role in vehicle safety, especially during severe crash scenarios such as small overlap frontal impacts. In these situations, energy typically absorbed by components like bumpers and crash boxes is instead transferred directly to the wheels, which can intrude into the passenger compartment and pose severe risks to occupants. However, most of the current research related to wheels are mainly focusing on the light-weight design, next-generation material selection (HSS, AHSS, DP, etc.), wheel fatigue life improvement, and standards, such as the SAE J175 [1] lateral impact test and the SAE J3203 [2] radial
Introducing J-SimRapid, A New Reduction Modelling Tool for Vehicle Crash Simulation