Structural Optimum Design of Strut Structure of vehicle using CFRP

Weight reduction while maintaining structural performance is one of the most challenging topics in automotive industry. Recent advances in manufacturing technology enable the automotive chassis strut to be built with composite materials. This paper describes the standardized finite element model for structure of vehicle made of CFRP composites. Recently, CFRP composites were widely used to vehicle due to the improvement of energy efficiency, high specific stiffness and strength and weight reduction. Therefore, structural integrity should be verified using finite element analysis prior to the manufacture of composite chassis strut. The standardized finite element model for composite structures was introduced through comparing the results of real structural test and finite element analysis. With this standardized finite element model, Composite Optimization is performed in the order of 3 steps- free size optimization, size optimization and staking sequence optimization using Tsai-Hill failure index