Design and Analysis of Sedan Car B-Pillar Outer Panel Using Abirbara with S-Glass Fiber Hybrid Composites

Abstract

Automotive industries are struggling hard to optimize vehicle body through different ways; like shape for its aerodynamics and aesthetics, weight of materials to be used for fuel efficiency, material conservation, recyclability, and others. The century’s competitive material in the industry is composite material especially natural composites are preferably based on different perspectives. As B-pillar is one of the critical structural support members of sedan cars, different considerations are taken to analyze and replace its outer panel with natural Nettle fiber composite. Mainly it should overcome two things; B-pillar must overcome the stress developed due to the system as it is a structural member and safeguard the occupant in the case of side crash. Considering these properties of the B-pillar, a natural fiber called Abirbara/Aleblabit/Ethiopian origin stinging nettle with S-glass hybrid composite was used to replace its outer panel with Ansys analysis. It is observed that Abirbara fiber, which can be extracted from the Abirbara plant is abundantly available in Ethiopia and is not yet used widely as composite materials. This work started with plant harvesting (collecting) and fiber extraction, which was performed through mechanical methods. The composites were prepared using chemically treated fiber with different orientations based on predetermined performance. Different mechanical properties were measured by using UTM machines and its tensile strength, compression strength, bending strength values are 153.166 MPa, 212.7 MPa, and 370 N peak load, respectively, whereas water absorption is 1.6% in 48 h. The model of the sedan car B-pillar panel was prepared by SpaceClaim software and analyzed for impact using Ansys software. Crush simulation of B-pillar panel with conventional material and composite material was computed. So the Ansys analysis shows that the energy absorption of EOSN fiber composite B-pillar panel is 2.61 and 0.15925 kJ for conventional materials. It is concluded that Abirbara composite can be used for B-pillar outer panel, which results in reduction of weight of the vehicle, fuel consumption, and an increase in energy absorption.