Computational Analysis of a Composite Energy Absorber for

Public Transport Vehicles

The purpose of this project to investigate the suitability of composite materials in crash guard for
public transport vehicles. Numerical simulations were performed on a honey comb composite
structure to investigate its suitability. The full-scale crash-test simulations were compared with
experimental results from literature survey. Impact Analysis of the honey comb structure were
performed on ANSYS 16.2.
A preliminary design of crash guard was created using Solid Works and imported to ANSYS
Design Modeler.

A model representing car geometry and impact surface were created in ANSYS DM.

The composite structure is made of Aluminium in the honeycomb region in which a polymer is
embedded. For the analysis two polymers were considered-Polyurethane and Sorbothane.
Total 3 cases with 2 variation in polymer materials were considered for the analysis. Another
case with 3 variations were considered to compare the effects of introduction of composite crash
guard.
Case 1: Honeycomb crash guard is placed on the front end of the car in following manner and
crash guard consists of total 7 layers (4 Aluminium and 3 polymer)

Case2: Honeycomb crash guard is placed on the front end of the car in following manner and
crash guard consists of total 9 layers (4 Aluminium and 5 polymer)

Case3: Honeycomb crash guard is placed on the front end of the car in vertical direction.

Case4
This case includes impact of car body without crash guard, impact of car with vertically aligned
crash guard made of aluminium only and impact of car with horizontally aligned crash guard
made of aluminium only.

Mesh Generation
Grid were generated on the geometry and impact surface using ANSYS Mechanical Application.
A hybrid mesh consists of hexahedron and tetrahedron was used to mesh the model. Total 1lakh
elements were created.

Mesh Statistics

A high quality mesh was created whose properties are given below.
1. Skewness
Skewness is one of the primary quality measures for a mesh. Skewness determines
how close to ideal (i.e., equilateral or equiangular) a face or cell is. According to the
definition of skewness, a value of 0 indicates an equilateral cell (best) and a value of
1 indicates a completely degenerate cell (worst).

2. Orthogonal Quality

The range for orthogonal quality is 0-1, where a value of 0 is worst and a
value of 1 is best.

Bonded contact is used to connect Crash guard and car frontal surface. A trajectory based
frictionless body interaction is used to model the interaction between impact surface and car.
Steel is used for the car body material and concrete is used as the impact surface material.
Impact test is simulated in ANSYS Explicit Dynamics run by Autodyn Solver. Vehicle is
assumed to be travelling at a speed of 60Kmphr for a time of 1e-3Sec.

Results
1. CASE 1.1
Composite material consists of Both Aluminium(4 layers) and Sorbothane(3 layers).
a. Deformation Results

Maximum deformation of the body is found to be 16.86mm.

b. Stress Results

Maximum stress developed on the body 323.73Mpa which is distributed in the composite
crash guard region preventing failure of the car body. The stress concentration is less than
the material failure limit indicating a safety of the car.

C. Energy Summary

Incoming car body has kinetic energy of 4.1e4 Joules before impact. After the
impact kinetic energy reduces to 2.8e4J. During the period internal energy is
increased on account of reduction in kinetic energy.

2. CASE 1.2
Composite material consists of Both Aluminium(4 layers) and polyurathene(3 layers)
a. Deformation results

Maximum deformation is 16.8mm which is same as the previous case.

b. Stress Results
Maximum stress developed on the body during impact is 318MPa which is
less than failure limit of the material.

CASE 2.1:
Composite material consists of Both Aluminium (4 layers) and Sorbothane(5
layers). Analysis is conducted for a speed of 80Kmphr
a. Deformation Results: Maximum deformation increased to 17.9mm

b. Stress

Results

Maximum stress developed on the geometry increased to 346.1Mpa when no

layers increased.

CASE 2.2:
Composite material consists of Both Aluminium (4 layers) and Polyurethane
(5 layers). Analysis is conducted for a speed of 80Kmphr
a. Deformation Results

Deformation is increased to 35.6mm which is higher than the previous case.

b. Stress Results

Maximum stress developed on the body is 313.1Mpa

CASE 3.1:

Crash guard is in vertically aligned position and main body is made of

aluminium.
11 sorbothane bodies are embedded in the main body.
a. Deformation Results

b. Stress
Results

CASE 3.2

Crash guard is in vertically aligned position and main body is made of

aluminium.
11 polyurethane bodies are embedded in the main body.
a. Deformation Results

b. Stress Results

CASE 4.1

Impact of car without crash guard is simulated here.

a. Deformation Results

b. Stress Results

CASE 4.2

Impact simulation of car with single material crash guard aligned in

horizontal direction.
a. Deformation Results

b. Stress Results

CASE 4.3
Impact simulation of car with single material crash guard aligned in vertical
direction.
a. Deformation Results

b. Stress Results