Investigation on Spot Welding Effect on Truss Core Panel for Crashworthiness

Abstract

One of the main concerns of the automotive industry is reduction in structural weight of automobiles. Reduction of weight on vehicles has been proven to lower the usage of fuel, and therefore save a lot of energy in order to move from one place to another. At the same time, reduction of weight often means reduction in material usage, often regarded to be threatening structural strength of parts, components or vehicles body in white (BIW). Truss Core Panel, which has been developed from the study of origami engineering, specifically plane-tilings and space fillings, is a suitable candidate because it can be produced from thin sheet metals and can be joined using spot welding. In this paper, method for evaluating truss core panels for crashworthiness has been established based previous research on crashworthiness evaluation on thin shells. The effect of different configuration of spot welding has been investigated. The number of spot weld (n) along central member and side members of truss core panel has been varied and modeled from n = 2, 4, 6 ... to n = 30, and compared to a truss core panel model that is fully welded along central member and side members. The results also show that it is possible to attain similar mean crush force to fully welded structure with smaller number of spot welds.