Lightweight Design For Passenger Vehicle Rear Seat Frame With Fiber Reinforced Composite Material

With the rapid economic development and living standard improvement, thenumber of vehicles has reached a new level, which results in increased consumptionof energy and deteriorated air pollution world-widely. Every country puts forwardregulations and laws aimed at restrictions of the energy consumption and the vehicleemission. It leads to the emergence and popularization of the lightweight design forvehicles. More importantly, how to achieve lightweight design of vehicles with aguarantee of the safety is probably an issue needs more discussions.With merits of high specific stiffness, high specific strength, low mass density,ease of manufacturing, short duration of production, fiber reinforced compositematerial soon becomes one of the research hotspots of lightweight material. Followingwith the higher standards of the vehicle safety, the weight of the seat frame, regardedas an important accessory of the vehicle, increases as a countermeasure. As theregulation in GB15083-2006, the vertical plane of the maximum deformation of theseat frame should be limited in100mm referring the R-point of the seat. Therefore,how to guarantee the strength of the seat frame with a lightweight seat becomes anincreasingly important concern of suppliers and manufacturers.To replace steel material with fiber reinforced composite material can not onlyreduce the weight but also facilitate module productions. As the progress of material,fiber reinforced composite material has developed from the cheapunstructuredcomponents to high strength and complicatedly shaped structural partswith large dimensions, such as the frontal module of vehicles and seat’s structuralframework.This paper depends on “The Key Research of Passenger Vehicle Rear Seat Framewith Fiber Reinforced Composite Material”, which is a special project of science and technology in Changchun, China. This paper discusses the lightweight design andsimulation for passenger vehicle rear seat frame with fiber reinforced compositematerial, along with an optimization of the designed seat frame.Upon the seat back frame of a certain passenger vehicle in production, replacingtraditional steel material with fiberglass-nylon composite material, and producing newseat back frame model based on the feature and design method of composite material.According to the requirement of GB15083-2006, luggage box impact sled-test islaunched.Simulation based on the CAE analysis for the luggage box impact sled-test isconducted to verify the effectiveness of the simulative method of composite material.Upon the results of sled-test and CAE analysis, the structure and material distributionof seat back frame can be optimized. According to the optimization result, theeconomic factor, and processed feasibility, an improvement structure withcorresponding CAE analysis can be put forward. Based on the characteristics of thelong fabric composite, a research of the simulation method for the overlay structure ofcomposite material is discussed in this paper. A seat back frame with compositematerial which has overlay structure is presented. According to regulations, simulatedverification for this new designed frame is conducted.This paper provides help to those whose researches are related to fiber reinforcedcomposite material.