ENERGY ABSORPTION ANALYSIS OF RUPD

Abstract

When passenger car hits the truck-trailer at rear, it penetrates inside the truck bed called truck trailer under-ride crash. This is responsible for thousands of accidents, causing severe injuries and spot death. This is mostly due to the lack of effective guards. The Present work focuses on energy absorption analysis of a Rear under Run Protection Device (RUPD) under crash scenario. The aim of the study is to replace Steel RUPD with RUPD made of composite material to reduce weight of the vehicle. In this study carbon fibre reinforced plastic composites were selected due to their high specific strength and specific stiffness which make them a preferred candidate in the material selection for modern lightweight structures in automotive engineering which can contribute to the improvement of mileage in addition to safety of the occupants. The RUPD was modelled in CATIA. Finite element model was generated in HYPERMESH and analysed in LS-DYNA for both Carbon/Epoxy RUPD and Steel RUPD and observed that Carbon/Epoxy RUPD absorbs 50% of kinetic energy; whereas steel RUPD absorbs 90%. But weight of Steel RUPD is 75 kg whereas the weight of Carbon/Epoxy RUPD is less than Steel RUPD which found to be below 15 kg. This results in weight reduction and increases mileage of the vehicle. Considering above advantage, composites can be potential candidate for RUPD.