Abstract
Door-in-white structures of left hand, front and rear steel (baseline) doors were redesigned to facilitate their manufacture from hot-blow-formed aluminum panels. The door designs each incorporated a “STAR” multi-purpose reinforcement panel. The STAR panel fulfills the functions of the traditional door intrusion beam and the outer belt line reinforcement, and also provides additional reinforcement to one of the door shut-faces. Prototype door-in-white structures were manufactured from quick plastically formed aluminum panels. Mass savings of 5.1 kg/door (front) and 4.7 kg/door (rear) were obtained in the prototype aluminum doors relative to their steel counterparts. The aluminum doors met all static stiffness criteria with the exception of upper header stiffness. FMVSS 214 testing indicated that the doors exhibited acceptable intrusion resistance when tested in the production vehicle (steel) body system. The aluminum doors also performed well in a dynamic LINCAP (full vehicle side impact) test.
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