Design and Analysis of Vehicle Frontal Protection Mechanism

Cars, especially N1 Light Commercials, lack crumple zones. Poor design and rigid structure would not protect automobile and passengers. A vehicle frontal protection device/bullbar solves this issue. Solidworks developed three concepts from the existing design. Choice matrix selected conceptual design 3. A decision matrix was used to choose the optimum material for the design from steel, aluminium, and carbon fibre epoxy. ANSYS Explicit Dynamics did a full-frontal collision finite element research on conceptual design 3 and the outgoing design using 304 stainless steel and carbon fibre epoxy. Simulated total deformation, equivalent stress, kinetic energy, and internal energy. Carbon fibre epoxy and better design reduced point deformation. 304 stainless steel and carbon fibre epoxy had maximum deformations of 0.0081932 and 0.011181 m in the old design and 0.0095112 and 0.010074 m in the new design. The previous design with 304 stainless steel and carbon fibre epoxy had stress values of 1.496e+9 and 1.7807e+9 Pa, whilst the current design had 1.3063e+9 and 7.3077e+8 Pa. The new carbon fibre epoxy design provided the lowest maximum stress and fastest energy absorption. 304 stainless steel and carbon fibre epoxy had 5068.8 and 1077.1 J kinetic energy, whilst the new design had 12,677 and 2693.7 J.