Efficient and Cost Effective Energy Absorbers for Automotive Bumper: A Novel Energy Absorber

During recent years, the development of new vehicles has to cope with continuously emerging requirements, implemented by new legislation and consumer test (eg. EuroNCAP) to insure occupant and pedestrian protection as well as new insurance classification test to improve vehicle damageability and repairability. These conflicting requirements have pose significant challenge to car manufacturers and designers to tune the vehicle front styling to meet pedestrian norm at the same time reduce damage to vehicle structure to minimize repair cost.

Today Indian automotive OEM's are expanding their arms in global platform and need to design compliant vehicle front structure to meet these regulations requirements. Bumper is the first component that will come in contact during pedestrian or car-to-car impact and has a main role in damping the impact and minimize the injury.

This paper explores injection molded thermoplastic energy absorber solution to meet pedestrian safety. Effective energy absorption, consistent impact performance for wide temperature range, functional integration makes thermoplastic as an ideal choice to designer. Thermoplastic energy absorber also gives higher design freedom to tune its stiffness based on the vehicle styling and regulation target. This paper presents thermoplastic energy absorber design at bumper level to meet lower leg form impact regulation. The effect of bumper height on the lower leg form kinematics and the design optimization to meet the pedestrian regulation target were discussed.