LEIKA

Efficient Multi-Material Designs for Lightweight Bodies

The topic of lightweight design remains a demanding topic within the automotive industry. The optimisation potential of conventional materials such as high and ultra-high strength steels are largely exhausted, so new materials are getting more and more relevant. The carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) are perhaps the most prominent representatives of new materials, which have found attraction in the automotive industry. Although these materials currently have the highest lightweight potential, the cycle times, material costs and the possible catastrophic failure are factors against the application of CFRP in mass production. A possible compromise between ductility, energy absorption and processing capacities are metal-CFRP sandwich materials. But the dynamic behaviour of these materials during an accident yet can only be simulated insufficiently. In addition, the behaviour of these hybrid material sheets compared to conventional steel sheets is significantly more affected by the manufacturing process.

The public project “LEIKA - Efficient Multi-Material De-signs for Lightweight Bodies” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has set itself the goal of identifying and investigating promising sand-wich materials for automotive applications. New designs needed for the efficient use of hybrid materials are developed, focusing on the feasibility of series production manufacturing and joining technologies for highly loaded body parts. To demonstrate the concepts an automotive floor structure will be developed and produced. Steel and magnesium are favoured as possible cover sheet materials. Carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastics are considered as the core material. In order to reduce the cost for experiments for future vehicle components, a special focus is set on virtual dynamic simulations. Complex failure types such as fracture and delamination and the production influences are considered for the simulation of the crash behaviour. The project goal is a floor structure produced under near series production conditions using novel sandwich materials, which can be effectively and accurately simulated.

This research and development project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the Framework Concept “Research for Tomorrow’s Production” (funding numbers 02PJ2770 - 02PJ2781) and managed by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA). The author is responsible for the contents of this publication.

LEIKA-Logo

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Dinesh Thirunavukkarasu
Manager Research Area
Vehicle Concepts & HMI
+49 241 80 25699
Email

Project duration

01/2013 – 01/2016

Project partner

ThyssenKrupp, Kirchhoff, KraussMaffei, Frimo, inpro, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Universität Paderborn, TU Dortmund, TU Dresden

Project website

plattform-forel.de

Supported by

[Logo: BM Bildung und Forschung]Sonstiges (s1)
PTKA - Projektträger Karlsruhe (Karlsruher Insitut für Technologoie)

Address

Institute for Automotive Engineering
RWTH Aachen University
Steinbachstraße 7
52074 Aachen · Germany

office@ika.rwth-aachen.de
+49 241 80 25600

We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential for the operation of the site, while others help us to improve this site and the user experience (tracking cookies). You can decide for yourself whether you want to allow cookies or not. Please note that if you reject them, you may not be able to use all the functionalities of the site.