International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET)

Volume 9, Issue 9, September 2018, pp. 915–922, Article ID: IJMET_09_09_101

Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/ijmet/issues.asp?JType=IJMET&VType=9&IType=9
ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359

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DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS OF SIDE

DOOR INTRUSION BEAM OF SUV
Raghvendra Krishana and Shivangi Yadav
Postgraduate Student, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Institute of Engineering & Technology, Lucknow- 226021(UP), India

Rajeev Kumar and H. K. Paliwal

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Institute of Engineering Technology, Lucknow- 226021 (UP), India

ABSTRACT
Vehicle side impact is the condition of the two vehicles, in which the vehicles
collide with each other at 900 or at some other angle. Space between the passenger
and door is very less and there is no room for energy absorption during the side
collision of vehicle therefore, side impact beam plays an important role in protecting
the occupants. The intrusion of an opposing vehicle depends upon the stiffness of the
door, door beam, sill region, b-pillar region, seat cross members. This study is based
on the selection of proper cross-section of side intrusion beam for SUV and then
comparison of the results of pole impact test between the actual side beam used in
vehicle and the beam with selected cross-section. For selection of side beam cross-
section three-point bending test was conducted on rectangular and circular hollow
cross section of same material and thereafter FEA analysis was conducted and results
were compared for the co-relation of analytical data with physical test. Rod with
rectangular cross section displayed more bending force taking capacity than circular.
Pole impact test simulation was performed according to FMVSS 214 on the vehicle for
circular and rectangular side intrusion beam having same weight and results were
compared.
Key words: FE analysis, Side impact, Beam bending, Pole impact, Ls-dyna.
Cite this Article: Raghvendra Krishana, Shivangi Yadav, Rajeev Kumar, H.K.
Paliwal, Development and Analysis of Side Door Intrusion Beam of SUV,
International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology 9(8), 2018, pp.
915–922.
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 Development and Analysis of Side Door Intrusion Beam of SUV

1. INTRODUCTION
Crashworthiness is the most important safety feature which must be fulfilled by every vehicle.
Vehicle crashworthiness, defined as the degree of occupant safety, when vehicle is involved
in the collisions. Passenger Safety is paramount importance in modern vehicle design. Side
vehicle impact is the condition of the two vehicles, which collide with each other at 900 or at
some other angle. In the side impact event, AIS+3 and more injury occurs if side and front
airbags are not installed in the car resulting thousands of deaths every year [1]. Even with the
airbags there is still a chance of injury. During side impact the door comes first in contact
with the hitting vehicle. As the space available between the occupants sitting inside the
vehicle and the inner door trims is limited and there is no space for energy absorption as
compared to the front-end collisions. Therefore, the design of side impact beam inside the
door should be such that it can sustain high load with and with smaller displacement.
Continuous work is being done by the designers to make the side intrusion beam strong
enough to reduce the amount of occupant‟s head accelerations. The variation in section,
thickness and material of beam affects the load path in case of side impact. The present study
is tries to analytically investigate the effect of impact on side intrusion beam after changing its
cross-section from circular section to rectangular section.

1.1. Structural Requirement

Occupant safety is paramount important for the vehicle manufacturers and also for the
Government. The transfer of energy and force depends upon the weight of the vehicle and the
speed. In side impact the upper limb injury chances are more as compared to frontal impact.
Therefore, the door beam should be stiff enough to take up the load. The study of load path is
essential for study the side impact analysis. The intrusion of pole is worst case in side impact
as the load is a concentrated load. As per the regulation (FMVSS 214) the vehicle hits the
pole at velocity of 32kmph and the door comes in contact with the pole. This is the worst-case
scenario in all side impact pole tests. In Europe and India for pole impact load case the
recommended speed of the vehicle is 29kmph.The vehicle manufacturing company assess the
worst load case so that the design can be pass the other regulations also [2].
As demonstrated in the figure 1 the load is transferred to the door first. In case of side
barrier impact the B- pillar also takes up the load. The cant rail, rocker, seat cross member
regions are also affected by the impact. Some load goes to roof bow on the top of the vehicle.
Some load distributed to rear door beam and near C-pillar region in case of side barrier
impact. For front occupant the major load comes on the intrusion beam, cant rail. The side
intrusion beam is required to save the occupant from hitting to his/ her chest area [3].
Many researchers have endeavored to find an improved design of intrusion beam to
reduce the occupant injury during side impact.

Figure 1 Load Path in Side impact [3]

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 Raghvendra Krishana, Shivangi Yadav, Rajeev Kumar, H.K. Paliwal

Yogesh et al. [4] used Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to determine appropriate cross-
section profile for the side door intrusion beam. Bending force required for different sections
were evaluated and compared. Optimum design of „side intrusion beam‟ which is best
performing for intrusion was determined. Dhaneesh et al. [5] suggested some advanced
concept to enhance the performance of side impact beam. To minimize the resulting intrusion
in side impact it is very essential to increase the strength of material. By keeping this view
author selected DOCOL1200 material, which is kind of high strength steel. The acceptable
value for maximum displacement according to FMVSS 214 regulation is 154 mm & with the
proposed design the deformation was noticed to be 180mm. By performing a number of
iterations author has optimized the design and finally updated the material. The maximum
displacement in final case was 140 mm which was less than the upper limit value of FMVSS
214 new regulation.
Teng et al.[6] focused their study on a Ford Taurus model. The full-vehicle FE model was
developed & analyzed for a dynamic side impact. The author mentioned two important
injuries thorax injury & pelvic injury as well as its causes, detrimental effect on occupant‟s
seating in the car. The observation was that the impacting force to the dummy pelvic area by
the intruding side structure is potentially the most injury-causing factor. Likewise, the
intrusion at the mid-door and window sill levels would potentially influence the thorax area of
the dummy. Pawar et al. [7] replaced the standard S-shaped side impact beam used in Ford
Taurus with high strength steel (AISI 4340) and proposed the new design. Efforts were made
to reduce the total weight of the car without sacrificing the safety of the passenger. For static
analysis instead of using complex door assembly preference was given to simplified model.
Impact force of 501945.5 N was applied to study intrusion behaviour for regular S-shaped
beam, circular beam, and rectangular beam.
This work present an improved cross section for the side impact beam cross section
through three-point physical test and simulations were performed to co relate with test. Apart
from this vehicle side pole impact simulations were performed with circular and rectangular
side intrusion beam having same mass of 1.1 kg of same material and results were compared.

2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Sample Preparation and Testing
For sample preparation rod of rectangular and circular cross section of FE250 material was
chosen due to easy availability. Depending on the testing constraints and requirements a
sample of length 370 mm, as shown in figure 2 was cut for both cross-sections. The
dimension of the rectangular section was 60x40x1.9mm and diameter of the circular section
was 33.8mm and the thickness was 3 mm. Overhang of 60 mm at each side of the rod was
properly marked and centre point of contact for impactor was also marked on rod. Specimen
was kept on the bending fixture of MTS UTM of capacity of 2500KN according to the
marking and impactor was placed at the centre of rod without any preload as shown in figure
3 Testing was done at the feed rate of 2.5mm/min. The lateral force was applied until the
specimen failed.

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 Development and Analysis of Side Door Intrusion Beam of SUV

2(a) 2(b)

Figure 2 (a) Rectangular section and (b) circular section specimens

3(a) 3(b)

Figure 3 Test setups for (a) rectangular rod and (b) circular rod

2.2. Finite Element Analysis

A two-dimensional geometry of specimens, shown in figure4 was created in Hyper-mesh. All
the dimensions were same as those of physical test specimens as mentioned above. First order
quads and trias of mesh size of 5 mm was used for meshing. Boundary conditions were
applied to the rigid base and all degree of freedom were fixed. Single surface contact was
defined for specimens as its elements are in contact during impact. Surface to surface contact
was defined between impactor and the specimen as well as between the base support and
specimen as shown in figure 5. Load is applied by rigid impactor and feed rate of 2.5 mm/ms
is defined. Further the meshed geometry of specimen was imported to Ls-Dyna for simulation
and analysis work. Data points of results obtained during analysis were plotted with the help
of hyper-graph. Analytical results were compared with the experimental results to ensure the
validity of analytical model.

4(a) 4(b)
Figure 4 Mesh model for (a) rectangular and (b) circular cross section

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 Raghvendra Krishana, Shivangi Yadav, Rajeev Kumar, H.K. Paliwal

Figure 5 Contact between Impactor-specimen and Base-specimen

In the second part full vehicle side pole impact simulations were performed according to
FMVSS 214 standard on the FE model of vehicle with circular and rectangular side intrusion
beam having same mass of 1.1 kg as shown in figure 6 and figure 7 and result were compared.

Figure 6 Door with circular beam Figure 7 Door with rectangular beam

3. RESULTS & DISCUSSION

The simulations were performed by using LS-Dyna explicit tool. Quasi-static test was
performed on the rectangular specimen and circular specimen.

Figure 8 Post images from test and simulation (rectangular section)

Post-test pictures of specimen are shown in figure 8. It can be seen that the test and
simulation results are similar. First peak of the curve in simulation, as shown in figure 9, was
approximately 5% less than the curve in the test. The overlap trend of both the curves was at
most similar.

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 Development and Analysis of Side Door Intrusion Beam of SUV

Figure 9 Force-displacement curve (rectangular section)

Post-test picture of specimen (in case of circular section) are shown in figure10. It is
evident that the test and simulation results are identical validity the FE model.

Figure 10 Post images from test and simulation (circular section)

Figure 11 Force-Displacement Curve (Circular section)

Force-displacement curves of the test and simulation for circular section are shown in
figure11. First peak of simulation is approximately 8% less than the test. Therefore, it can be
inferred from the comparison between two specimens that the value of peak force for the
rectangular section is 9% higher than that from circular section.

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 Raghvendra Krishana, Shivangi Yadav, Rajeev Kumar, H.K. Paliwal

Rectangular cross section with modified dimensions as 26x28x1.4 mm was used for
simulation of full vehicle pole impact. Selection of this dimension was based on the
limitations of door space and to make weight of rectangular rod same as that of the circular
rod used in vehicle model.
For full vehicle pole impact load case, maximum energy with rectangular cross section
side impact beam is more than 27% as compared to the case with circular side intrusion beam
as shown in figure 12.

Figure 12 Comparison of energy absorbed by circular and rectangular cross-section

The impact force in the simulation with rectangular beam is more than the force with
circular beam as shown in figure 13.

Figure 13 Comparison of impact force for rectangular and circular cross section

4. CONCLUSIONS
The analytical model demonstrated a good correlation with the physical model with proposed
model showing better simulated properties. From the simulation of full scale model of SUV, it
is evident that energy absorbed by rectangular section is approximately 34% more than that of
circular rod of same material and weight. Further it can also be inferred from graph, shown in
figure 13 that rectangular rod is stiffer than that of circular rod between 10ms to 35ms.

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 Development and Analysis of Side Door Intrusion Beam of SUV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to convey our sincere thanks to Civil Engineering Department Indian Institute
of Technology, Kanpur for their support during experimental work. We are also thankful to
Mr, Ajay Srivastava (Project Engineer at Engineering Technology Associate, Inc Michigan,
USA) for his technical support during the analysis.

REFERENCES
[1] The trauma audit and research network (online) available at:
https://www.tarn.ac.uk/content/downloads/72/coding.pdf [accessed 20 August 2018].

[2] The European new car assessment programme (online) available at:
https://www.euroncap.com/en [accessed 20 August 2018].

[3] Crashworthiness and Occupant Protection - Paul Du Bois, Clifford C. Chou, Bahig B.
Fileta, Tawfik B. Khalil, Albert I. King, Hikmat F. Mahmood, Harold J. Mertz, Jac
Wismans.

[4] Nichit, P.Y.K. and Battu, A.K., 2017. Development of Side Door Intrusion Beam of
Passenger Car for Maximum Bending Load.

[5] Dhaneesh K P, Prabakaran, 2016 “Study and advanced concept for side impact protection
beams to reduce the injury of the occupant using CAE” International journal of
mechanical and production engineering(IJMPE), volume- 4, issue-5 pp:55-60.

[6] Teng, K. C. Chang, T. H. Nguyen, 2007” Crashworthiness Evaluation of Side-Door Beam

of Vehicle”, Technische Mechanik, 28 (3-4), pp. 268-278.

[7] Avinash P. Pawar, S. H. Mankar, 2017 “Crashworthiness Evaluation of Low Weight

Recyclable Intrusion Beam for Side Impact,” International Engineering Research
Journal, volume: 04, issue: 02, pp: 1644-1650.

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