Characterisation of Thermoplastic Foam Core Materials for Sandwich Applications under Crash Load

Abstract

Based on the requirements on the overall vehicle like driving dynamics, comfort, safety, ergonomics, costs, environmental safety and image the specific requirements on body-in-white components can be derivate. An important task of the material pre-selection is the mechanical properties and the structural requirements for each specific component. In the presented talk the developed method for material pre-selection is described for a firewall, which functions as a shear field. A firewall influences significantly the torsional stiffness of the body-in-white and as secondly protects the occupants during for all front crash load cases. Due to the main advantages of fiber reinforced thermoplastics, which have improved impact resistance compared to thermoset composites, a thermoplastic composite, consisting out of a PA6 skins and a homogeneous PA6 core is chosen as material. In the presentation the characterization of the foam material and the subsequent development of the numerical description of PA6 sandwich core for dynamic loading conditions are shown.