OPTIMIZATION OF CAR

BUMPER

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 INTRODUCTION

CAR BUMPERS:
• In automobiles, a bumper is the front-most or rear-most
part, designed to allow the car to sustain an impact without
damage to the vehicle's safety systems. They are not
capable of reducing injury to vehicle occupants in high-
speed impacts, but are increasingly being designed
to mitigate injury to pedestrians struck by cars.
• The car bumper is designed to prevent or reduce physical
damage to the front and rear ends of passenger motor
vehicles in low-speed collisions.
• In most jurisdictions, bumpers are legally required on all
vehicles. The height and placement of bumpers may be
legally specified as well, to ensure that when vehicles of
different speed are in an accident.
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• Designing the bumper with the focus on an improvement
• This project intention is to design an improved of front car
bumper and to find the solution for the problem of high cost
and the replacing cost for the front bumper and lastly
emphasizing the cost reducing aspect.
• Different materials can be used in production of car
bumpers:
1. PVC
2. Plastic-Polycarbonate (Molded)
3. Plastic-Nylon Type 6/6
4. Plastic ABS (Molded).
5. AISI E 52100 Steel

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 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

• Nowadays the part cost for front bumper is still high and
the cost for replacing is quite expensive especially if
surrounding area or part also damaged.
• Many part that make up a bumper system, involving a lot
of material and processes there for the manufacturer
difficult to reduce the price. Customer also blame to the
manufacture that the bumper easily to damage although
the collision was slow.
• The material of the bumper should be analyzed to find the
alternative material that can improve the toughness.

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 OBJECTIVE

The method have been employed was study the front

bumper system, design and analyze the alternative front
bumper using CAD software. And to achieve the objective
of the project, the following activities are performed:
1. To analyze on mechanical properties focus on stress
analysis.
2. Benchmark the current front car bumper design
(MARUTI 800)
3. To modeling the actual dimension of the car bumper
into the Solid Work software and analyze between the
current design and the alternative design.
4. Perform CAE simulation to the alternative bumper.

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

1. A good design of car bumper must provide safety for

passengers and should have low weight (Marzbanrad et al
., 2009). Beside the role of safety, fuel efficiency and
emission gas regulations are being more important which
encourage manufacturer to reduce the weight of
passenger cars (Hosseinzadeh et al., 2005).
2. It is not a safety feature intended to prevent or mitigate
injury severity to occupants in the passenger cars.
Bumpers are designed to protect the hood, trunk, grille,
fuel, exhaust and cooling system as well as safety related
equipment such as parking lights, headlamps and taillights
in low speed collisions (Status Report,Vol 4, No 2, IIHS,
2007).
3. Generally, a bumper is attached to either end of a vehicle
to absorb impact in a collision, thereby protecting
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passenger. As shown in figure 1, a conventional bumper
4. Many researchers have studied the four main variables
during crash simulation and analysis (Kim, 2008; Marzbanrad
 et al., 2009;Hosseinzadeh et al., 2005). The first variable
studied is the material. It has been exposed in this research as
a substitution in order to lower part weights and define
whether the material can affect the impact of collision or not.
In this section, the effect of modulus of elasticity and yield
strength on impact behavior of bumper beam was
investigated. Thickness is the second variable that has been
studied in order to relate between bumper and thickness that
can affect the impact of collision.
5.Bumper design has focused on material and structure.
Andersson et al. (2002) investigated the applicability of
stainless steel for crash-absorbing bumpers to increase crash
performance in automotive vehicles.

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 METHODOLOGY

Automotive bumper System .Photo courtesy

:Neoplen ,2006

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• The simulation of a bumper is characterized by impact
modelling using Abaqus 6.9 according to the speed that is
13.3 m sec-1 (48 km h-1) given in order to analyse the
results. This speed is according to regulations of Federal
Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, FMVSS 208- Occupant
Crash Protection whereby the purpose and scope of this
standard specifies requirements to afford impact protection
for passengers.
• the three types of material were selected that are relevant
to be applied to the front bumper beam. The materials
consist of Expanded Polypropylene (EPP), Glass Mat
Thermoplastics (GMT) and Sheet Molding Compound
(SMC). 
• These materials were studied by impact modelling to
determine the kinetic energy, potential energy and strain
energy. The selected materials are compared to each other
to find the best material with highest material strength and
structure. Simulation using Finite Element Analysis
software, which is ABAQUS was conducted. The results
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showed that a modified SMC bumper can reduce the impact
 REFERENCES

1. Marzbanrad, J., M. Alijanpour and M.S. Kiasat,

2009. Design and analysis of automotive bumper beam in
low speed frontal crashes. Thin-Walled Struct., 47: 902-
911.
2. Hosseinzadeh, R., M. Shokrieh and L.B. Lessard,
2005. Parametric study of automotive composite bumper
beams subjected to low-velocity impacts. J. Composite
Struct., 68: 419-427.

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