Study on alternative composites materials for automobile windshields

Abstract

Because of the need for lightweight materials, low-cost composites are possibly used to replace a large portion of mineral and glass fillers in the various vehicle interior and exterior parts. A Finite Element Method (FEM) is implemented to analyze different composite lay-ups in this study. Laminated glass, Silicon, Poly-Vinyl Butyral (PVB), and Tilara-polycarbonate materials are examined in this research. The materials listed above are kept up to five layers with a total thickness of 7 mm in various configurations and analyzed using an FEA model created using ANSYS. Also, an explicit dynamics method is provided to test the windshield capabilities by absorbing the high impact of the given mass of 0.5 kg and with an impact velocity of 30 m/s to demonstrate the correctness and applicability of the suggested approach of composite material analysis. The stress and total deformation were obtained in all scenarios, and the best case was chosen based on the highest stress distribution and minimal deformation. The maximum von-Mises stress distribution and minimal total deformation were obtained at values of 28611 MPa and 6.62 mm for Case 5 and Case 4 respectively and were validated with the aid of simulation results in the literature.