New technological developments for applying Magnesium in crash related vehicle structures

Abstract

Typical magnesium bulk materials show high potential to reduce weight in automotive or aerospace applications. Technical limitations are coming from the material behavior under crash loads and through the tension/compression asymmetry of many magnesium bulk alloys. To implement magnesium into new applications, DLR has studied the behavior of magnesium structures in dynamic bending and axial compression load cases intensively. Magnesium has been implemented to a seat frame structure, developed within the publicly funded project FUMAS (Functionally integrated magnesium lightweighting for automobile seat structures). Based on the prototypes, DLR has performed additional crash tests to investigate the structural behavior. For axial loads, cutting or peeling mode based mechanisms have been developed and investigated, which allow the use of magnesium in these challenging applications. New results show very interesting properties, allowing for using magnesium even in axial crash conditions and for adjusting crash load levels very precisely.