Toward lightweight smart automotive hood structures for head impact mitigation: Integration of active stiffness control composites

Abstract

Recently, novel material concepts for high-performance carbon fiber–reinforced composites with active stiffness control were presented in the literature. Although this new class of intelligent, smart, and responsive materials has wide application potential, actual design concepts using active stiffness control are still rare. The integration of smart materials into conventional products often requires radically new design concepts. This communication presents an innovative automotive hood design concept, which integrates active stiffness control composites in order to achieve improved design performance trade-offs in terms of structural weight reduction and vulnerable road user safety. The integration of active stiffness control composites in the hood structure aims to enable active stiffness reduction of the hood or bonnet structure in order to reduce head impact injuries in case of a collision, while satisfying the structural stiffness requirements and lightweight objectives under normal operating conditions. The design concept is investigated using simulation-based evaluation of static, dynamic, and lightweight design criteria. The results are promising, and the presented concept design is a step toward the realization of lightweight smart hood structures for head impact mitigation. Several design features could also be of interest for the integration of active stiffness control composites, in other applications.

Control Strategy for Safety Purposes Based Upon Momentum Regulation

“…Σ e =x cmd − x, (12) where x ∈ R 6 denotes the position and orientation of the end effector, x cmd ∈ R 6 the command trajectory in the operational space, Σ e ∈ R 6 the error term, and…”

“…The conventional method involves measuring and regulating the contact force to restrict the movement of the manipulator. Active stiffness control [12], [13] was proposed to address a peg-in-hole task in the assembly, and it can be used to reduce the contact force due to a spring property assigned to the end effector. Impedance control [14] is regarded as an extension of the active stiffness control as the virtual impedance assigned to the manipulator is extended as a mass-spring-damper model from a spring model [15].…”

Computational Rational Engineering and Development: Synergies and Opportunities

“…Increasing complexity is one of the biggest challenges in engineering design and modern product development [8]. Many products are becoming increasingly complex due to the integration and blending of various state-of-the-art technologies, such as composite materials, smart materials [35], and distributed control systems. Large-scale concurrent engineering on complex projects involves many tasks, sub-problems, various types of uncertainties [36,37], decision-making based on incomplete information, and a dense web of information flows and interdependencies [38].…”

Research on lightweight and fatigue life of engine hood based on multi-objective particle swarm optimization

“…The mass of an engine hood panel was reduced by up to 44.5%. To solve the conflicting design requirements on the mass and pedestrian head impact, Vyas et al 10 presented an innovative automotive hood design concept, which integrates active stiffness control composites in order to achieve improved design performance trade-offs in terms of structural weight reduction and pedestrian head impact. By combining XGBoost and LightGBM algorithms with the bagging method, Chen et al 11 proposed a hybrid model with hyperparameters optimized by the grey wolf algorithm to predict the torsional stiffness of engine hood.…”