Abstract
Bumpers are widely used in the automobiles in varied form. They are majorly classified as front bumper and rear bumper. Bumpers are the reinforcement system which comprises of shock absorbers, bumper beam, fascia, bolts and the bumper cover. For common man bumper is fascia, but actually bumper is the reinforcement beam which is made to absorb load, shocks at the time of small or big impacts or accidents. Bumper system are used in all variants and all classes of vehicles, exceptions are two wheelers. Bumpers are part of passive safety and of prime importance as the first aid during the impact or collision. The more energy absorbed by the bumper, more safe is the passenger seating inside the vehicle. To accommodate the increased legal requirement, stringent safety and crash rules, the bumpers have undergone varied changes in the design as well as with materials too. Composites are proving to be good and alternative choice to the vehicle manufacturers for steel and aluminium due to their advantages such as flexibility in selecting the strength parameters, easily mouldable, light weight, corrosion resistant, can be added with aesthetic looks, higher strength than the conventional metals.Automotive industry is moving towards use of lighter material to enhance performance of the vehicle in terms of increasing fuel efficiency, reducing overall weight of the vehicle and also indirect impact on the emissions. Objective of this article is to investigate the efficiency of carbon composite material for the automotive bumper beam. This article deals with deign of such a composite material for the passenger vehicle. The passenger vehicle selected is the Tata Indica model. The bumper designed has not been altered, but only the material of the bumper was changed from sheet metal to composites and the results have been studied for the two different composite materials. Various analytical and FEM analysis have been performed to check the correctness of the design. Results have been validated by physically checking the material properties with the help of universal testing machine. Thus the results have been validated for the performance.
Keywords: Bumper beam, Carbon composite, Strength, Energy absorption