Crashworthiness research on S-shaped front rails made of steel–aluminum hybrid materials

In the paper, crashworthiness of the S-shaped rail extracted from the frontal frame in a car is studied. In order to reduce the peak impact force while increasing the total absorbed energy, the hybrid materials are employed in that rail, where aluminum alloy is used for its front part and advanced high strength steel (AHSS) for its back part. By designing 16 experiments based on orthogonal experiment, the effect of five influence factors with four levels on the crash performance of the steel–aluminum hybrid S-shaped front rail is emphatically investigated. These influence factors include the different material types of aluminum alloy and AHSS, the sheet thicknesses of the two parts, and length proportion for the aluminum part. The AHSS includes dual-phase (DP) steel, transformation induced plasticity (Trip) steel and Mart steel; the aluminum alloy series include 5000 and 6000 series. The research result shows that the use of steel–aluminum hybrid materials can reduce the peak impact force and the total weight for the S-shaped front rail, while the total absorbed energy can be greatly increased, so the crashworthiness and lightweight of the S-shaped front rail are significantly improved.