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Nowadays, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions are topical issues in the automotive field, as environmental safeguard legislation constraints are going to get tougher. Indeed, one of the most efficient methods to contain fuel consumption and emissions is the weight reduction of the vehicle. In this paper, a feasibility study on the lightweight redesign of a metallic car hood by using composite materials is presented. In particular, two different configurations, employing composite laminates and sandwich structures, are investigated. The feasibility of each configuration is assessed in terms of stiffness specifications and pedestrian safety requirement. Hence, Head Injury Criteria are employed, according to regulations. Finally, an optimization procedure on the stacking sequence of the composite laminates is performed, to determine, among the feasible solutions, the one characterized by the minimum weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lumped Mass-Spring (LMS) model is simple but very effective for the design study of vehicle crashworthiness and occupant safety. To construct the LMS model, the SISAME software and the NHTSA test data were used. Using the SISAME, the weights of mass elements and the load-paths of spring elements were optimally and directly extracted from the test data. Among the various types of spring, the segmented inelastic type of spring was effective for the vehicle crash analysis. In this study, to obtain the occupant injuries such as HIC15 and 3 ms Chest g's, the LMS model containing the occupant model consisted of the head, chest and pelvis was developed and validated. The modeling for the chest deflection and neck injuries was not considered in this study because of the modeling difficulties and the limitation of the SISAME software. The simulation results of occupants showed good agreements with the test results. The modeling idea for the occupant was simple but very effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]