Light-weight metal-monocoque structure for a transport vehicle

Abstract

The DLR Institute of vehicle concepts is currently developing a lightweight transport vehicle. The main goals of this project are to develop a prototype vehicle with increased overall efficiency, very high passenger safety and low manufacturing cost, especially regarding the necessary investment to begin production. In order to achieve these goals a light weight body structure is developed that is almost completely made of metal sandwich elements. In this business case one or several indian companies set up a production facility under guidance of and licensed by the DLR. They could then either use the body for the production of their own transport vehicles, or sell it to international car manufacturers or suppliers. By manufacturing the vehicles outer skin as a separate thermoplastic part, the aluminum-sandwich body structure can be designed from few large parts which are geometrically simple. This enables companies with low budget to produce a highly competitive body structure without the usual need for high investment. Because of this Separation of outer skin and structure, the structure can also be better adapted to the crash loads. FEM-calculation performed by the DLR regarding several side and front impact cases have shown an excellent crash behavior at very low weight. Since the structure is made of metal alloys, the disadvantages of fibre reinforced parts (which are also associated with low investment costs), regarding processing time, raw material cost, difficulty of recycling and low damage tolerance do not apply here.