An experiment and FE simulation for the development of a SPFC1180 AHSS one-body door impact beam about a car side collision

This paper presents a new one-body door impact beam that was developed to protect an occupant when a car is involved in a side collision. SPFC1180 Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) was used to improve the impact energy absorbability and the small door dent to ensure safety inside of the car. To obtain the proper closed cross section shape of the door impact beam, several designs with the same inside area were considered by conducting a finite element (FE) bending analysis using the ANSYS Mechanical software. FE door modeling was validated with the impact simulation package of the LS-DYNA software, and the results were compared to those from the door module test. The validated door beam model was also subjected to a side collision test of a complete vehicle following the FMVSS 214 regulation using a parallel computing simulation, and a comparison was carried out for the pipe-typed door beam using a virtual structural test applicability. The results indicate that the SPFC1180 one-body door impact beam can exhibit an equivalent reaction force and can decrease manufacturing costs and weight when compared to a pipe typed door beam as a result of the AHSS material, simple manufacturing process, and one-body closed-section shape design.