Design and analysis of coir fibre reinforced polypropylene based internal car door panel

Abstract

In today’s world demand for durability and recyclability are among the main factors considered while choosing a material for any products to be made. In the automobile sector apart from exterior parts of the vehicles, the interior parts should also be durable as it faces different types of loads in various situation. Internal door panel is considered as one of the most important interior part of the vehicle as it has to undergo different forces from the user side and also are meant to reduce the impact force on the passenger in an accident. Natural fiber reinforced polymer composites are considered to be very durable and are lighter than a lot of other materials present in the market. They have higher impact strength, higher tensile strength than a regular material. The Young’s modulus of coir fibers usually lies between 4 and 6 GPa. In this work coir fiber reinforced polypropylene was used as the material for the internal door panel. It has an elastic modulus of 1.9 GPa and has a tensile strength of 34 MPa. A FEA was done on the door panel to determine whether it is going to be a suitable replacement of the current material which is being used and if the maximum stress exceeds the ultimate tensile strength then whether the remaining stress will affect the human body in a fatal way or not. The deformation seen was around 1.036 mm with the maximum stress being 3.877 × 107 N/m2, which is an acceptable value for protecting the occupant. When a load of 100 N was put on the armrest it showed a maximum deformation of 1.213 × 104 N/m2 which is not more than the Young’s modulus meaning it can handle a load on the armrest when someone put their hand on it. The maximum deformation in the armrest was only 6.49 × 10−4 mm, showing it is suitable as a material for the internal car door panel.