Variable Wall Thickness Impact Beam for Vehicle Crash Safety
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing impact beams in vehicles face challenges in achieving optimal load-bearing capacity and crash performance while maintaining low weight and cost-effectiveness, often resulting in components with uniform wall thickness that are heavier than necessary.
Innovation Solution
The impact beam is designed as an elongated component with varying wall thicknesses along its length, produced using extrusion and subsequent press-forming techniques, allowing for a non-uniform cross-section and orientation transverse to the extrusion direction, enabling energy dissipation and high stiffness while maintaining rigidity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If impact beams are produced with uniform wall thickness to ensure load-bearing capacity, then crash performance is improved, but component weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The impact beam features variable wall thickness along its longitudinal axis, with different sections having different wall thicknesses. The front and rear sections have different wall thicknesses than the middle section, allowing each region to be optimized for its specific loading conditions. This local differentiation enables weight reduction in less critical areas while maintaining sufficient strength in high-stress regions, thereby resolving the contradiction between crash performance and component weight.
2Reliability
If impact beams are designed as rigid components to maintain passenger compartment stability, then protective function is improved, but dead weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The impact beam employs variable wall thickness design where different longitudinal sections have different thicknesses optimized for their specific functional requirements. This allows the beam to achieve the necessary rigidity and stability in critical load-bearing regions while reducing weight in areas with lower structural demands, thus resolving the contradiction between reliability and dead weight.
3Ease of manufacture
If impact beams are produced by extrusion with uniform cross-section, then manufacturing simplicity is improved, but design flexibility deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The impact beam is divided into multiple longitudinal sections, each with different wall thicknesses. This segmentation allows the beam to achieve complex variable cross-section geometry that optimizes structural performance for different loading conditions. The segmented design provides greater adaptability and versatility in meeting diverse structural requirements while still utilizing standard extrusion and press-forming manufacturing processes.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from a uniform two-dimensional cross-section to a three-dimensional variable cross-section along the longitudinal axis. By introducing variation in the thickness dimension along the length of the beam, the design achieves greater flexibility and adaptability while maintaining compatibility with conventional extrusion and press-forming manufacturing methods.
4Weight of moving object
If impact beams use varying wall thicknesses to reduce weight, then component weight is reduced, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The invention combines extrusion and press-forming processes to create the variable wall thickness profile. By merging these two manufacturing methods, the complex variable cross-section geometry is achieved without requiring entirely new manufacturing equipment or processes. The extrusion process creates the basic profile, and press-forming subsequently shapes the variable thickness sections, thereby reducing weight while controlling manufacturing complexity through process integration.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach results in a lightweight, cost-effective impact beam with enhanced load-bearing capacity and crash performance, capable of targeted energy dissipation and high flexural normal stress resistance, while avoiding weight and cost inefficiencies.
Implementation Method 1
shaping techniques, in particular by press-forming, deep-drawing or tensile compressive deformation, in order to bring the impact beam to its final configuration
Implementation Method 2
a blank and/or light metal profile is produced by means of extrusion molding and/or extrusion
Data Source
AI summary
An impact beam and a method of producing the impact beam for a motor vehicle is disclosed. A light metal profile with an extrusion width is produced by flattening the light metal profile to a working width and cutting to length to form semi-finished products. The semi-finished products are subjected to further treatment by press-forming techniques to form the impact beam. The impact beam has a longitudinal length which extends transversely to the direction of extrusion of the light metal profile.