Mechanically fastened composite side-door impact beams for passenger cars designed for shear-out failure modes

Abstract The fuel efficiency and emission gas regulations of passenger cars are two important issues nowadays. The best way to increase the fuel efficiency without sacrificing safety is to employ fiber reinforced composite materials in the body of cars because fiber reinforced composite materials have higher specific strengths than those of conventional steel or aluminum. In this study, a composite side-door impact beam for passenger cars was designed to reduce the weight of steel impact beam using glass fiber reinforced composite. The static bending tests of the beams were performed for the optimum fiber stacking sequence, followed by the static tensile tests of the joint between the composite beam and the brackets on the car body. In order to increase the energy absorption characteristics of the composite impact beam, the mechanical joint was designed to fail with fiber shear-out mode, from which the impact energy might be dissipated during the side-door collision of passenger cars. The manufactured composite impact beam was mounted on the real side-door of a compact passenger car and tested under static bending moment. From the test, it was found that the composite impact beam with 70% weight of a high strength steel beam had comparable static bending strength.