In this study, the failure characteristic of the center floor of a front-wheel drive vehicle was investigated according to material. UHSS, Al6061-T6, CFRP, and CFRP-Al were used as materials. As the analysis condition, a fixed support was applied to the rear surface of the center floor and a forced displacement of 2 mm/sec was applied to the front surface. As the result, when comparing with the equivalent stress and strain energy according to the material, it was found that UHSS, Al6061-T6, CFRP, and CFRP-Al were higher in the order. Also, when comparing with the equivalent strain due to the material, it was shown that the equivalent strain was high in the order of Al6061-T6, UHSS, CFRP and CFRP-Al. As for the damage characteristic of the center floor according to the material, it was found that the highest structural stability was obtained when UHSS was used. However, it was found that it was good to utilize Al6061-T6 in order to acquire the structural stability along with the structure with the lighter weight.

An aluminium sandwich sheet is the composite adhered by rolling two aluminum panels to one plastic core. If it has the same bending stiffness as an steel sheets, it is about 65% lighter than steel sheet and 30% lighter than aluminum sheet. In present study, we intend to develop application technologies of an aluminum sandwich sheet for auto body panels from selecting composed materials of aluminium sandwich sheets to fabricating prototype. For this study, for the application of a light sandwich sheet to an automotive hood part, ribbing process so called, hemming for which joined between an inner and an outer panel was introduced. From these results, it was found that the sandwich sheet could improve the weight and maintain the flexural rigidity simultaneously comparing to the steel sheet.

The structural performance of a vehicle can be evaluated by the static and dynamic structural analyses which predict the amounts of deformation & stiffness, and the static analysis should be done first. Another important aspect to be considered in the design process is crashworthiness, because a structurally sturdy vehicle body may be overdesigned with the excessive strength and durability standards. The ideal condition of a body structure is to absorb the impact load at a certain level of local deformation, to distribute the load to each structure adequately, and to prevent the excessive stress concentration and deformation. This paper is the result of the consideration of vibration characteristic for structure stiffness estimation of automotive body through the finite element modeling.

The design and analysis of the rigidity and deformation of the vehicle body are basically performed in two forms. First, the relative response of components separated from a parent system or connected as a model of a subsystem is examined. Second, the entire model is used to consider the absolute response of the components to the externally transmitted vehicle service load, which is defined as that of the entire vehicle body system. In this paper, we propose the finite element modeling for the structural design of the car body. First, we will explain the simple finite element modeling of the car body, explain the method of formulating the stiffness of the joint, and finally the shell element. The proposed finite element modeling is proposed. By applying the proposal, it is possible to propose finite element modeling of all medium and large passenger cars less than 3 tons.

The structural performance of a vehicle can be evaluated by the static and dynamic structural analyses which predict the amount of deformation, stiffness. And the static analysis should be done first. Another important aspect to be considered in the design process is crashworthiness, because a structurally sturdy vehicle body may be overdesigned with excessive strength and durability standards. The ideal condition of a body structure is to absorb impact load at a certain level of local deformation, to distribute the load to each structure adequately, and to prevent excessive stress concentration and deformation. This paper is the result of the consideration of automotive body, bending and torsional stiffness for structure stiffness estimation of automotive body through finite element modeling.

Pitch is an attractive raw material for carbon fiberprecursors due to its low cost stemming from its availability as a residue of coking and petroleum processes. Ford Motor Company reported a carbon fibertarget price of 11.0/kg by using a fast cycle-time manufacturing method with carbon fiberin an inexpensive format, allowing for an average retail price of gasoline of 3.58/gallon. They also recommended the use of carbon fiberwith strength of 1700 MPa, modulus of 170 GPa, and 1.5% elongation. This study introduced a ca. 5.5 μm carbon fiberwith 2000 MPa tensile strength obtained from a precursor through simple distil-lation of petroleum residue. Petroleum pitch based carbon nanofibersprepared via electros-pinning were characterized and potential applications were introduced on the basis of their large specific surface area and relatively high electrical conductivity.