STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF COLLABORATIVE SHELL COMPOSITE STRUCTURES ON THE CRASHWORTHINESS OF AN ELECTRIC MICROCAR

Frame structure is the principal structural component for vehicles. With the aim of providing lightweight solutions with improved structural capabilities, in this paper, an innovative frame concept is proposed. The first innovative aspect of the proposed frame concept relies on the modularity. The addition of effective junctions between frame components was achieved thanks to the Additive Manufacturing technology. lndeed, differently from standard frame structures manufactured by welding separate tubes, the innovative frame concept, proposed in this activity, has a modular structure designed to be connected by additive manufactured joints and meant to be easily accessible for maintenance operations and interchangeability of components. Moreover, the second innovative aspect relies in the integration of collaborative shell composite structures able to improve the overall torsional stiffness of the whole frame. The effectiveness of the proposed structural concept has been assessed by simulating the crashworthiness behaviour of an electric microcar equipped with the investigated frame, by means of numerica! simulations conducted according to the American homologation standards (FMVSS 208). By performing numerica! impact simulations against a rigid and deformable barrier, the mass, the energy efficiency and the torsional stiffness between microcar configurations, respectively, with steel tubes and composite collaborative shell structures, have been compared. The comparison against these two microcar configurations demonstrated that the integration of the collaborating shell composite panels can lead to a total weight saving of about 25% and the simultaneous increase of the impact energy absorbing capability and torsional stiffness of the microcar.