Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2015, Vol. 7(6) 1–12
Ó The Author(s) 2015
Design and analysis of automotive DOI: 10.1177/1687814015589561
aime.sagepub.com
carbon fiber composite bumper beam
based on finite element analysis

Tie Wang and Yonggang Li

Abstract
In this article, the most important part of the automotive front bumper system, namely, the bumper beam, is studied by
changing the material and thickness to improve the crashworthiness performance in low-velocity impact. According to
the low-speed standard of automotives stated in E.C.E. United Nations Agreement, Regulation no. 42, the low-velocity
impact simulation based on finite element analysis is carried out. Lightweight is the main purpose of this article. First, the
bumper beam analysis is accomplished for carbon fiber composite and steel material to analyze their deformation,
weight, impact force, energy absorption, and the acceleration of the impactor. As a consequence, the bumper beam
made by carbon fiber composite achieves better impact behavior. Second, on the purpose of lightweight, the bumper
beams of different thickness including 5.4, 6, 6.6, and 7.2 mm are investigated. The results show that the 5.4 mm bumper
beam is the best selection without sacrificing the impact performance. Third, according to the stress distribution, the
thickness distribution of the bumper beam is changed to get better lightweight results. It is indicated that the weight of
the improved bumper beam is further reduced and the impact performance is not weakened.

Keywords
Automobile, beams, computer-assisted design, finite element analysis, composite structures

Date received: 3 January 2015; accepted: 5 May 2015

Academic Editor: Xi Shi

Introduction transfer the impact energy to other components of the

When accidents of frontal impact occur, the front bum-
per system, which may to some extent protect the car
body and passengers, is the first part that receives the
collision.1 This system is made up of three main parts:
fascia, energy absorber and bumper beam.2 The fascia
is a non-structural component that reduces the air resis-
tance, while the energy absorber dissipates part of the
kinetic energy during collision and the bumper beam is
a structural component which absorbs the low impact
energy by bending resistance. Generally speaking, the
bumper system mainly has four functions. At first, it
can protect the fender, radiator, engine hood, and
lamps when low-speed impact happens between the
automobile and the other automobiles or barriers and
automobile when high-speed impact occurs. Second, it
should minimize the injury of the pedestrians while the
car hits pedestrians. Third, it may fulfill the car body
aerodynamic requirements. Finally, it can decorate and
beautify the car body. Of the four functions, the first
two, the focus of numerous studies, are particularly
significant.
School of Automobile and Transportation, Shenyang Ligong University,
Shenyang city, China
Corresponding author:
Tie Wang, School of Automobile and Transportation, Shenyang Ligong
University, Shenyang 110159, China.
Email: wangtiesylg@126.com

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openaccess.htm).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
In the fact that the bumper beam is the key segment
of the bumper system, there are lots of investigations
concentrating on the bumper beam. Park et al.3 devel-
oped a kind of bumper beam cross section which could
satisfy the safety requirements not only for a front
rigid-wall impact but also lower leg injuries in a pedes-
trian impact test. Farkas et al.4 studied the optimization
of a vehicle bumper subsystem with fuzzy parameters.
This article presented the application of the fuzzy finite
element analysis (FEA) in conjunction with Possibility-
Based Design optimization in the context of crash-
worthiness. Early bumper beam is made by steel. But
considering the factors such as lightweight design, fuel
consumption, and environmental legislations, the
demand of manufacturers cannot be better satisfied
using this kind of material. Under this circumstance, a
lot of new materials are applied to the manufacturing
of the bumper beam. Marzbanrad et al.5 analyzed the
automotive bumper beam in low-speed frontal crashes.
He used the material such as steel, aluminum, magne-
sium, Glassfiber Mat Thermo-plastic (GMT), and
Sheet Molding Compound (SMC). And through com-
paring the weight and impact behavior, he found that
high-strength SMC composite was proposed to replace
GMT as it could minimize the bumper beam deflection,
impact force and stress distribution; and maximize the
elastic strain energy. Davoodi et al.6 studied the
mechanical properties of hybrid kenaf/glass-reinforced
epoxy composite for passenger car bumper beam. The
results indicated that some mechanical properties such
as tensile strength, Young’s modulus, flexural strength,
and flexural modulus were similar to GMT, but the
impact strength was lower. So the hybrid kenaf/glass-
reinforced epoxy composite had the potential applica-
tion value in some car structural components such as
bumper beams. Belingardi et al.7 studied the geometri-
cal optimization of bumper beam profile made of pul-
truded composite. In this article, E-Glass/epoxy
pultruded bumper beam was considered and its energy
absorption capability was compared with steel and E-
Glass/epoxy fabric composite. Results indicated that
the pultruded bumper beam had comparable energy
absorption capability with respect to the steel normal
production solution. The new composite solution,
which had appropriate optimization of bumper beam
section profile and beam curvature, had better energy
absorption characteristics.
A great many of investigations have been carried
out for thin-walled structures under impact loading.8–12
The bumper beam in this article is made of thin-walled
structure too. The method of FEA is adopted in this
article.
In this article, how the material can influence the
impact behavior is investigated. This is accomplished
by using two approaches. First, change the material of
the bumper beam from steel to carbon fiber composite.
Through respectively simulating, it turns out that when
it comes to lightweight, the carbon fiber composite
material has a big advantage over steel. And second,
vary the thickness of the bumper beam made by carbon
fiber composite on the purpose of achieving the best
lightweight results.
The low-velocity impact simulation conditions in this
study follow the ECE R042 standard, which requires
that the function of automobiles does not suffer dam-
age after impact. The reference for ECE standard which
is related to the low-velocity impact will be introduced
in detail in the section ‘‘Finite element model’’ when
establishing the finite element model.
Impact theory
There are two different kinds of impacts, that is, elastic
impact and plastic impact. In an elastic impact, a little
of energy that can be neglected is lost between the two
impacting objects, while in a plastic impact, there is a
great deal of energy dissipated in the collision. The type
of impact which occurs between the front bumper sys-
tem and an impactor in this article is elasto-plastic
impact because the severe crash force exists. Since tran-
sient and nonlinear analyses are involved, the impact
phenomenon is very complex. Of particular interest
here is to study the impact behavior of the contact
area.
The total energy is conserved throughout the impact
process. Moreover, since in the process of collision, the
objects contact with each other for a short time and the
interaction force which makes the internal force far out-
weigh the external force is too big, the momentum
before an impact is equal to the momentum after the
impact. The energy and momentum conservation equa-
tions after separation point can be expressed as follows5
1 1 1
mA v2A = mA v2A1 + mB v2B1 ð1Þ
2 2 2
mA vA = mA vA1 + mB vB1 ð2Þ
where mA is the mass of the impactor, mB the mass of
vehicle, vA the velocity of the impactor before impact,
vA1 the final velocity of the impactor after separation
point, and vB1 the final velocity of vehicle after separa-
tion point.
Another deterministic criterion to measure the
impact is the coefficient of restitution abbreviated sim-
plified as COR, which is the ratio of the speed differ-
ences after and before a collision5
 
vA1  vB1 
COR =   ð3Þ
vA  vB 
On a collision course, the mass of the contactors is
constant but their velocity suffers great changes.
Wang and Li
Figure 1. Finite element model after meshing (a) is made up of four sections, namely the car body, the brackets, the bumper
system and the impactor and (b) consists of three parts, namely the bumper beam, the foam and the fascia.
Therefore, the COR is a useful factor to measure the
energy variation. The COR value of 1.0 stands for elas-
tic collision, while perfectly plastic impact occurs when
the value is zero. This number can infer how much
kinetic energy remains after impact. The higher the
number is, the more the kinetic energy is left. On the
contrary, when the value is closed to zero, there is
much kinetic energy converted into the internal energy.
Since the type of this article is elasto-plastic impact, the
COR value is located between the interval [0, 1]. That
is to say, in the process of collision, part of the kinetic
energy is absorbed. The plastic strain energy which is
represented by the letter E is gained by subtracting the
kinetic energy of the vehicle and the impactor after
impact from the kinetic energy of the impactor before
impact
1 1 1 1
E= mA v2A + mB v2B  mA v2A1  mB v2B1 ð4Þ
2 2 2 2
Finite element model
Clearly, for FEA, there are several factors that will
influence the quality or accuracy of the results
obtained.13 Meaningful or useful results will depend on
the type of elements employed, the element quality, the
number of elements used, and the simulation of bound-
ary constraints and loading conditions.13 Since the soft-
ware Altair HyperMesh has great advantages over
other software in meshing, it is adopted in this study.
At first, the computer-assisted design (CAD) data of
the impact model was imported to the coupling envi-
ronment of Altair HyperMesh and LSDYNA. Second,
the geometry cleanup and meshing were done to the
model. The finite element model after meshing is shown
in Figure 1. Figure 1(a) is the impact finite element
3
model and Figure 1(b) is the finite element model of
the bumper system.
The bumper beam is attached to two energy absorb-
ing brackets as shown in Figure 1(a), and the brackets
are attached to the thin-walled structure which is used
to simulate the car body using the rigid steel material.
The connector between the car body and the energy
absorbing brackets is accomplished by shifting the rear
circle grid of the two brackets to the car body. The con-
nector which is also used for the brackets themselves
between the brackets and the bumper beam is achieved
by setting up rigid joints.
Nonlinear explicit impact modeling elements were
used in this study. Because the thickness of the bumper
beam, brackets, fascia, and car body is much smaller
than the other dimensions, the shell element is the best
choice for meshing. While the energy absorption foam
as well as the impactor is a three-dimensional solid, the
best type of element is the solid element.
The shell elements of the bumper beam, brackets,
and fascia are mainly quadrilateral elements with fewer
triangular ones because of geometry limits. The car
body is meshed by quadrilateral elements. The impac-
tor and foam are modeled with hexahedral elements
which have higher accuracy and produce fewer nodes.
Material type MATL 57 (mat-low-density-foam) is
used for simulation of the foam. Material type MATL
24 (mat-piecewise-linear-plasticity) is used for simula-
tion of the bumper beam, fascia, and brackets. Material
type MATL 55 (mat-enhanced-composite-damage) is
used for simulation of the carbon fiber composite.
Material type MATL 20 (mat-rigid) is used for simula-
tion of the impactor and the car body.
The type of automatic-surface-surface contact is con-
sidered to simulate the interfaces of this impact model.
The automatic-single-surface contact is defined to the
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Table 1. Finite element model characteristics of the models.
Part of model Material FEA element
Fascia Plastic Shell
Foam Plastic Solid
Bumper beam Steel Shell
Brackets Steel Shell
Car body Rigid steel Shell
Impactor Rigid steel Solid
FEA: finite element analysis.
set containing the fascia, bumper beam, and brackets.
All friction is ignored. The finite element model charac-
teristics of each component in the original modeling are
shown in Table 1.
According to the ECE standard, the impactor col-
lides to the bumper system in straight direction. The
velocity of the impactor is 4 km/h, and the height of the
impactor baseline is 445 mm away from the ground at
the same time the baseline keeps horizontal. The ECE
R042 standard also requires that the automotive brakes
should be released and the transmission is in the neu-
tral position. This request is equal to fix the bumper
system to a movable platform. Gu et al.14 came up with
a simplified method by making the impactor collide to
the bumper which is fixed to the fixed rigid metal
frame. They used the equivalent energy method to ana-
lyze the initial impactor velocity relationship of the two
different ways and proved the validity of the method.
According to that method, the equivalent initial velo-
city of the impactor is gained through equation (5)
pffiffiffi
2 advantages over steel, the most salient of which are
v= v1 ð5Þ
2
where v1 is the initial velocity of the impactor provided
in the ECE R042 standard and v the initial velocity of
the impactor used in this article.
For impact simulations, the finite element model
was revealed by LSDYNA solver. And HyperView and
HyperGraph were used for post-processing.
Bumper beam material
The choice of the bumper beam material has a vital
effect on the impact performance of the vehicle. A
proper selection can minimize the weight and get high
fuel efficiency without sacrificing the strength.
It is said that 75% of fuel consumption directly
relates to vehicle weight. Lightweight composite materi-
als provide opportunities for reducing vehicle weight,
thus increasing fuel efficiency and reducing emission of
harmful pollutants. On the condition of everything else
remaining the same, 6%–8% increase in fuel economy
Element number Thickness or weight
21,944 2.41 mm
5475 1.632 kg
2858 2.34 mm
3105 1.889 mm for medial side
1.3 mm for lateral side
4013 1061 kg
8188 1061 kg
can be realized for every 10% reduction in weight. The
advantages of composites compared to steels for auto-
mobiles are15 (1) weight reduction of 20%–40%; (2) sty-
ling flexibility in terms of deep drawn panels, which is a
limitation in metal stampings; (3) 40%–60% reduced
tooling cost; (4) reduction in assembly cost and time;
(5) resistance to corrosion and scratches, reduced noise
vibration harshness (NVH), and higher damping; (6)
materials and process innovations capable of adding
value while providing cost savings; and (7) safer struc-
tures due to higher specific energy absorption.
Carbon fiber composites are called as the 21st cen-
tury automotive materials. It has many advantages
such as low density, high strength, high modulus, high
temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, self-lubri-
cating, good conductivity/thermal performance, and
low thermal expansion coefficient. Because of so many
excellent properties, the carbon fiber composites
become very important raw materials in preparing vari-
ous structural and functional composites.
Fiber-reinforced polymer composites possess several
their high strength-to-weight ratio and excellent corro-
sion resistance.16 Carbon fiber composites can not only
increase the strength of the structure but also decrease
the weight of the structure. There are some articles
studying the application of carbon fiber composites in
the automobiles. Bambach17 investigated the applica-
tion of carbon fiber strengthened steel tubes to the fron-
tal crush tubes of two different passenger vehicles under
frontal collisions. Substantial improvement, namely,
the potential for vehicle light-weighting, was accom-
plished. Such components had the potential to contrib-
ute to improvements in fuel efficiency and emissions
reductions in future passenger vehicles. Bambach18 also
studied the structure of carbon fiber composite
strengthening of thin steel passenger vehicle roof. Such
fiber strengthening structure could gain substantial
increases in force resistance for steel tubes under both
axial crushing and pure bending. And the implications
with regard to vehicle light-weighting were discussed. It
was shown that fiber composite strengthening of vehicle
structure had the potential to contribute to higher roof
Wang and Li
Table 2. Material properties of the original model.
Part of model r (g/cm3)
Fascia 1.415
Foam 0.09131
Bumper beam 7.89
Bracket 7.89
The ‘‘—’’ represents data not found.
Table 3. Mechanical parameters of T300/5208.
Parameter E1 E2 G12
Value (MPa) 158,000 10,300 7200
strength and light-weighting. Bussadori et al.19 studied
carbon fiber–reinforced plastic (CFRP) crushing struc-
tures in explicit crash. They used two different numeri-
cal models to analyze several different parameters on
the final results. The work showed the advantages of
crushing zone modeling compared to a stacked shell
one.
However, relative to the materials such as steel or
aluminum, the price of the carbon fiber composites is
too expensive to be widely used in the automobile man-
ufacturing. Since a lot of research institutions are spar-
ing no efforts to reduce the manufacturing cost of
carbon fiber composites, the commercialization of car-
bon fiber composites automobiles will come true in the
near future. Therefore, carbon fiber composites are
used to the bumper beam instead of steel in this
investigation.
In order to study the effect of the type of material on
the impact behavior, the specifications of steel and car-
bon fiber composite were assigned to the bumper beam
in separate impact simulations. Other characteristics of
the model such as fascia, foam, brackets, impactor, and
so on remained constant. Mechanical specifications of
the original model are illustrated in Table 2. In Table 2,
r stands for the density and Sy the yield stress, E the
Young’s modulus, y the Poisson’s ratio.
The type of the carbon fiber composite used in this
article is T300/5208 whose density is 1.6 g/cm3 and car-
bon content is 70%. The Poisson’s ratio (y12) of the car-
bon fiber composite is 0.285. Table 3 shows its other
mechanical parameters. The thickness of the bumper
beam is 6.6 mm. The fiber orientation is [0, 90, 0, 45,
245]11.
In Table 3, E1 stands for the longitudinal tensile elas-
tic modulus and E2 the transverse tensile elastic modu-
lus, G12 the shear modulus, Xt the longitudinal tensile
strength, Xc the longitudinal compression strength, Yt
the transverse tensile strength, Yc the transverse com-
pressive strength, and S the shear strength.
5
Sy (MPa) E (GPa) y
20 1 0.3
— 0.0306 —
800 200 0.3
380 200 0.3
Xt Xc Yt Yc S
1496 1496 40.1 249 67.2
Figures 2 and 3 show the energy curves of the two
impact models whose bumper beam is made by steel
and carbon fiber composite, respectively. Through ana-
lyzing the energy curves, the validity of the finite ele-
ment model can be determined. In this article, in order
to speed up the computing speed, the reduced integra-
tion is used. But this method can cause a zero-energy
model which is called hourglass. If the hourglass energy
is less than 5% of the total energy, the finite element
model is reliable. Because the hourglass energy is too
small to show, the hourglass energy curve is shown in
another picture.
According to Figures 2 and 3, in the process of colli-
sion, the kinetic energy decreases while the internal
energy increases. This change indicates that the kinetic
energy is absorbed by the bumper system. Then the
kinetic energy increases while the internal energy
decreases. The change indicates that the springback
occurs in the bumper system. Obviously, in the two fig-
ures, the total energy is constant. In Figure 2, the maxi-
mum hourglass energy is 0.88 J, which is 0.27% of the
total energy. And in Figure 3, the maximum hourglass
energy is 1.42 J, which is 0.43% of the total energy.
Therefore, the hourglass energy of the two impact
models has no significant effect on operational results.
So the finite element model is authentic.
The ECE R42 standard does not provide a reference
point to measure the deformation. The center of the
impact point is unrepresentative sometimes. So the
node 2031050 whose deformation is the biggest in the
bumper beam is taken as a reference point to observe
the deformation of the bumper beam. The deformation
versus time diagram is shown in Figure 4. The maxi-
mum deformation is 19.1 and 16.3 mm, and the maxi-
mum deformation point is 0.084 and 0.080 s for steel
and carbon fiber composite, respectively. The reason
for this situation is that the stiffness of carbon fiber
composite is higher than the stiffness of steel.
According to experience, when the deformation
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 2. Energy curve of the model with the bumper beam made by steel.

changes to the lowest value with a slight fluctuation,
the collision ends. So as shown in Figure 4, the end
time of collision is 0.1373 and 0.1356 s for steel and car-
bon fiber composite, respectively. Since the plastic
deformation occurs in the bumper system, the last
deformations of the two bumper beams do not become
zero.
By analyzing the change of energy which is obtained
by the output of the software HyperGraph from
Figures 2 and 3 and the deformations from Figure 4,
the bumper system whose bumper beam is made by
carbon fiber composite absorbs nearly the same kinetic
energy. But the maximum deformation of the carbon
fiber composite bumper beam is lower than that of the
steel bumper beam. So through using the carbon fiber
composite, the impact performance of the bumper
beam is improved.
The impact force between the impactor and fascia
which is shown in Figure 5 is also a significant para-
meter to be studied in this article. According to Figure
5, the maximum impact force is 25.5 and 25.0 kN for
steel and carbon fiber composite, respectively.
Another parameter to be investigated is the accelera-
tion of the impactor. The acceleration versus time curve
is shown in Figure 6. As shown in this figure, the maxi-
mum acceleration of impactor is 24055.9 and
23553.6 mm/s2 for steel and carbon fiber composite,
respectively.
After comprehensive analysis of Figures 5 and 6, it
is clear that both the impact force between the impac-
tor and fascia and the acceleration of impactor are
decreased slightly using carbon fiber composite instead
of steel. So the work that remains to be done is to study
the parameters of the carbon fiber composite in order
Wang and Li 7

Figure 3. Energy curve of the model with the bumper beam made by carbon fiber composite.

Figure 4. Steel and carbon fiber composite bumper beam deformations.

8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 5. Impact force between impactor and fascia of two bumper systems.

Figure 6. Acceleration of impactor of two impact models.

to improve the impact performance of the bumper
system.
Bumper beam thickness
On the basis of reading a large number of references, a
conclusion is drawn that materials with different thick-
nesses can gain different performance. So in this article,
different thicknesses of carbon fiber composite bumper
beam are taken into consideration to achieve the effect
of thickness on impact performance of the bumper sys-
tem. The thickness of the bumper beam is 5.4, 6.0, 6.6,
and 7.2 mm as shown in Figure 7. As we can see in this
figure, the maximum deformation of the beam
decreases and the rate of decrease becomes less with the
increase of thickness.
However, the value of the acceleration of impactor
which is shown in Figure 8 increases with the increase
of thickness. The increase of impactor acceleration can
lead to the increase of impact force between impactor
and fascia as shown in Figures 7 and 8. Therefore, it
does not mean that the thicker the better.
The main purpose of this article is lightweight with-
out sacrificing the impact behavior. From the viewpoint
of impact performance, reducing the maximum accel-
eration can improve the level of protection of other
Wang and Li
Figure 7. Effect of thickness on the deformation of bumper beam.
Figure 8. Effect of thickness on the acceleration of impactor.
body parts and passengers. Therefore, the bumper
beam with less thickness is better. Through comparing
with the bumper system with steel bumper beam, the
maximum deformation of the bumper system with a
5.4 mm bumper beam is 18.8 mm, which is less than
19.1 mm, and the maximum acceleration of impactor is
22052.7 mm/s2, which is less than 24055.9 mm/s2, so the
5.4 mm bumper beam is regarded as the best choice.
The weight of the original steel bumper beam is 4.96 kg,
while the weight of carbon fiber composite bumper
beam is just 2.32 kg. The weight reduction ratio of car-
bon fiber composite bumper beam is up to 53.2%.
9
Improvement of the bumper beam
structure
The von Mises stress distributions of carbon fiber com-
posite bumper beam and steel bumper beam are shown
in Figure 9. According to Figure 9, at 0.072 s, the von
Mises stress has the biggest value. The von Mises stress
of steel bumper beam is 1073 MPa, while the von Mises
stress of carbon fiber composite bumper beam is
1466 MPa. Even though the stress value of carbon fiber
composite bumper beam is bigger than that of the steel
bumper beam, the stress distribution of the former is
better than the latter.
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Figure 9. Von Mises stress distribution of carbon fiber composite and steel bumper beam.

Figure 10. Improved bumper beam.

The problem remaining to be solved is to further Table 4. Impact results of bumper beams before and after
reduce the weight of the carbon fiber composite bumper improvement.
beam through changing its structure considering satis-
fying the impact performance. Reducing the thickness Parameter Bumper beam
of some places can further reduce the weight. Whether Unimproved Improved
the changed structure satisfies the impact performance
remains to be proved through comparing the para- Deformation (mm) 18.8 19.4
Acceleration of impactor (mm/ 22052.7 21832.3
meters before and after improvement in the following s2)
content. Figure 10 shows the improved bumper beam. Impact force between fascia and 23.4 23.2
Its thickness of left and right sides is 4.2 mm, and its impactor (kN)
middle part is 5.4 mm. Energy absorption of bumper 323.9 324.3
The impact results of bumper beams before and system (J)
Maximum von Mises stress 1466 1362
after improvement are shown in Table 4. According to (MPa)
Table 4, in addition to the deformation, the other para- Weight of bumper beam (kg) 2.32 2.18
meters of the improved bumper beam are better than
Wang and Li 11

Table 5. Impact results of the improved bumper beam and the of impactor can be gained by the carbon fiber
steel bumper beam. composite bumper beam.
2. Through analyzing the impact behavior of dif-
Parameter Bumper beam
ferent thickness bumper beams, the best choice
Steel Improved of thickness is 5.4 mm. Its weight is 2.32 kg. Its
weight reduction ratio is up to 53.2% than the
Deformation (mm) 19.1 19.4
steel bumper beam without sacrificing the
Acceleration of 24055.9 21832.3
impactor (mm/s2) impact performance.
Impact force between 25.5 23.2 3. Through changing the thickness distribution of
fascia and impactor the bumper beam as shown in Figure 10, the
(kN) weight of the bumper beam is decreased further;
Energy absorption of 323.9 324.3
at the same time, the overall impact perfor-
bumper system (J)
Maximum von Mises 1073 1362 mance is a little better than the unimproved
stress (MPa) one.
Weight of bumper 4.96 2.18
beam (kg)
The steel can be replaced by the carbon fiber compo-
site since the carbon fiber composite has great advan-
tages over steel in terms of lightweight. These
that of the bumper beam with constant 5.4 mm. Of par- advantages are also conductive to the improvement of
ticular interest here are the reduction of maximum von fuel efficiency and the decrease of emission of harmful
Mises stress from 1466 to 1362 MPa and the decrease pollutants.
of the weight from 2.32 to 2.18 kg.
The impact results of the improved bumper beam Declaration of conflicting interests
and the steel bumper beam are shown in Table 5. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests
According to Table 5, although the deformation and regarding the publication of this article.
the maximum von Mises stress of the improved bumper
beam are bigger than that of the steel bumper beam, Funding
the acceleration of impactor and the impact force This work is supported by Natural science fund project of
between fascia and impactor have been reduced. And Liaoning Province under Grant #20102189, Science and tech-
the reduction is necessary. Of great importance here is nology plan projects of Liaoning Province under Grant
the decrease of the bumper beam from 4.96 to 2.18 kg. #2011220055, and fund project of Shenyang Tongchuang
FRP Company under Grant #2012040503.

Conclusion
When designing the bumper system, the deformation of
the bumper beam must be less than a value in order to
protect the other components from damage. And the
maximum stress cannot exceed the yield stress. What is
more, under the premise of satisfying the impact perfor-
mance, the weight of the bumper beam should be mini-
mized as much as possible.
Under the condition of low velocity impact, most of
the energy is absorbed by the bumper system. After
impact simulations in accordance with the ECE R042
standard considering the parameters which have influ-
ence on the impact performance, the following results
are indicated:
1. Through the analysis of lightweight materials,
the carbon fiber composite is selected as the
material of the bumper beam instead of steel in
order to achieve the lightweight design.
Comparing with using the steel bumper beam,
less bumper beam deformation, impact force
between impactor and fascia, and acceleration
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