Struct Multidisc Optim (2018) 57:965–975
DOI 10.1007/s00158-017-1788-z
RESEARCH PAPER
Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite
B-pillar with ply drop-off
Qiming Liu 1 & Yongjun Li 1 & Lixiong Cao 1 & Fei Lei 1 & Qiong Wang 1
Received: 13 March 2017 / Revised: 24 July 2017 / Accepted: 15 August 2017 / Published online: 26 August 2017
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017
Abstract Vehicle lightweight and safety design becomes an
increasingly critical issue nowadays. In order to improve the
crashworthiness of side impact and roof crush with the consid-
eration of the manufacturing process, a new composite B-pillar
structure with ply drop-off is proposed in this paper. It improves
the crashworthiness by changing the section thickness of struc-
ture and reduces the weight of B-pillar. The ply drop-off re-
gions on the outer part and inner part of B-pillar are divided into
three sub-laminates respectively, named as thick panel, taper
panel and thin panel. The thickness of the panel are determined
by the number of lay-up. Based on traditional sensitivity anal-
ysis, this paper derives some new equations and clearly evalu-
ates and quantifies the importance of uncertainty design param-
eters. Finally, the comprehensive performance of the light-
weight and crashworthiness for the composite B-pillar with
ply drop-off is improved through structural optimization.
Keywords Composite structure . B-pillar . Ply drop-off
structure . Crashworthiness . Lightweight . Sensitivity
analysis
1 Introduction
With innovative developments in automotive lightweight de-
sign (Wallentowitz and Adam 1996; Lei et al. 2015), there is a
great challenge to realize the ultimate weight reduction by the
* Fei Lei
lei_fei@hnu.edu.cn
1
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for
Vehicle Body, College of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering,
Hunan University, Changsha 410082, People’s Republic of China
existing materials and processes. At present, optimization de-
sign of vehicle body structure and application of lightweight
materials are two predominant ways to reduce the vehicle
weight. High-strength composite materials become the most
promising way in lightweight design. Although composite ma-
terials have been widely used in the aerospace industry, they are
still just beginning in automobile industry (Feraboli and Masini
2004; Obradovic et al. 2012; Feraboli et al. 2007). Due to the
high cost, composite structures are selectively used in luxury
high-performance automobile and significant components of
civil cars, like anti-collision beam (Zeng et al. 2015), B-pillar
(Chen et al. 2015), etc. For the majority of components in most
automobiles, metallic energy absorption devices are widely
used to improve the crashworthiness. Some researchers pre-
sented a lot of interesting structures by experiments and
simulations. Zhang et al. (2009) investigated the energy-
absorbing behavior of pressurized thin-walled circular tubes
to control energy absorption characteristics. Wang and Zhou.
(2017) studied the imperfection-sensitivity of origami crash
boxes to improve the compliance of structure. Although metal-
lic energy absorption devices have some advantages in energy
absorption, composite structures can not only reduce the
weight, but also improve the crashworthiness. Therefore, as
the forming process gradually improved, the application and
cost of composite will be more popular and economical.
B-pillar, as one of the most significant structural compo-
nents in automobile body structure, plays an important role in
vehicle crashworthiness and energy absorption. In the side im-
pact, the lower part of B-pillar directly takes part in the impact
of mobile deformable barrier (MDB). For the consideration of
crashworthiness, this part should not be too stiff. So the struc-
tural design of B-pillar requires the higher strength in upper
region and the lower strength in bottom region (Lei et al.
2013). Besides, it is proved that the stiffness of B-pillar is
critical to resist the deformation. It can hold the great rigidity
966
of the compartment so that the invasion can be reduced in roof
crush (Hamza et al. 2003). At present, several design methods
are proposed on the structural design of B-pillar. For instant, the
method which combined topological optimization with shape
optimization was used in the improvement of B-pillar perfor-
mance to reduce the occupant chest injury in collision (Guo
et al. 2006). One-piece B-pillar structure was designed to pro-
vide side impact strength by the process of tailor-welded blanks
(Pan et al. 2010; Xu et al. 2013). The thicknesses of different
regions in B-pillar were optimized by using support vector
regression (SVR) and the weight of B-pillar was reduced by
27.64%. Generally, the optimal design of traditional B-pillar
with metallic materials was mainly concentrated in the thick-
ness and the shape optimization of the cross section (Marklund
and Nilsson 2001). However, for the composite B-pillar, the
optimal design is more unrestricted. And it has a better perfor-
mance on the characteristic of energy absorption. Kopp et al.
(2012) proposed the rib type B-pillar structure to improve the
side crashworthiness and to reduce the weight of B-pillar based
on the characteristic of crumple energy absorption.
At present, the structural design and optimization of metal-
lic B-pillar mostly concentrated on the section parameters.
The improvements in both crashworthiness and lightweight
can not be guaranteed simultaneously. Besides, the application
of the reinforcement in the upper region of B-pillar increases
the manufacturing costs and makes it difficult to assemble. For
the composite B-pillar, it usually neglects the design ability of
composite material, such as the influence of layer angle and
thickness for the parts’ properties with the consideration of
process. Meanwhile, the lightweight research of the composite
B-pillar is commonly focusing on the strength of the compos-
ite and energy absorption instead of being combined with the
process characteristics of the composite material. The above
two types design are both defective. A composite structure
with ply drop-off as one of laminate plates is researched to
manufacture the important components. The thickness of the
components can be easily changed by terminating plies at
different locations. So the ply drop-off structure is very prac-
tical and has been widely used in the aerospace industry, such
as the wing of the plane (Vidyashankar and Krishna Murty
2001), helicopter rotor blades (Mukherjee and Varughese
1999). In automotive field, many scholars have done some
research and applications. Yang et al. (Yang et al. 2015) de-
signed a composite front bumper with ply drop-off structure,
which enhanced the crashworthiness of vehicle in low-speed
impacts. It makes the mass distribution more reasonable for
the front bumper of vehicle, which helps to avoid wasting
materials and reduce the weight. Therefore, in this paper a
new composite B-pillar with ply drop-off structure is proposed
to improve the crashworthiness and reduce the weight, and
remove the reinforcement of B-pillar. In the design of com-
posite B-pillar, Sensitivity analysis is used to quantifies the
importance of influential parameters of B-pillar and achieve
Q. Liu et al.
a reasonable and practical design of B-pillar. The method is
very convenient to help designers clearly recognize what
should be of great concern in B-pillar design and provide the
guidance for structure optimization of the B-pillar.
In this paper, the outline of the work is as follows: The next
section completes structural design of composite B-pillar. In
Section 3, the model of vehicle roof crush and side impact are
established and verified. Based on the high dimension model
representation (HDMR) and variance decomposition, this
method achieves sensitivity indices of uncertainty parameters
for the composite B-pillar with ply-drop off in Section 4.
Subsequently, optimization analysis is performed to improve
the performance of the composite B-pillar. Finally, conclu-
sions are drawn in Section 5.
2 Structural design of composite B-pillar
The B-pillar is located between the front and rear doors of
vehicle. It consists of three components, named as B-pillar
inner plate, B-pillar reinforcement plate, and B-pillar outer
plate. At present, for the B-pillar of most vehicles, the metal
is the preferred material. The finite element model of B-pillar
is shown in Fig. 1.
The composite structure with ply drop-off is applied to im-
prove the performance of B-pillar and simplify the B-pillar rein-
forcement by the variation of the thickness of inner panel and
outer panel. The B-pillar is usually designed to achieve the high
resistance and rigidity in the region door hinges and door locks. It
can guarantee the living space of the driver and reduce the direct
damage of occupant in a side impact. It also should have enough
strength to resist deformation in the case of the roof crush. Thus,
the composite B-pillar with ply drop-off structure needs to lay
more composite plies in the upper part of the B-pillar and reduce
its plies in the lower part to form different section thicknesses.
Fig. 1 Finite element model of metallic B-pillar structure
Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite B-pillar with ply... 967

Table 1 Material properties of T700/2510 unidirectional tape

Properties LS-DYNA parameter Value

Density Ro 1.52 g/cm3

Modulus in 1-direction EA 127 GPa
Modulus in 2-direction EB 8.41 GPa
Shear modulus GAB 4.21 GPa
Major Poisson’s ratio - 0.309
Minor Poisson’s ratio PRBA 0.02049
Strength in 1-direction tension XT 2.20 GPa
Strength in 2-direction tension YT 48.9 MPa
Strength in 1-direction, compression XC 1.47 GPa
Strength in 2-direction, compression YC 199 MPa
Shear strength SC 154 MPa

Fig. 2 Structure design of composite B-pillar with ply drop-off
Unlike the tailor-welded blank technique, the ply drop-off struc-
ture doesn’t need to connect the parts with different thicknesses.
The drop-off region should not be located at the complex areas to
avoid the stress concentration. The height of ply dropping area
should be higher than the upper surface of the MDB to avoid
directly participating in side impact. Hence, the ply drop-off
structure of B-pillar inner and outer plate can be simply divided
into three regions, respectively. They are the thick panel, the taper
panel and the thin panel. According to the aforementioned re-
quirements and the distribution of the original reinforcement, the
structure design is clearly described in Fig. 2. The figure shows
that the vertical lengths L1, L2, L3 and L4 are 461 mm, 645 mm,
575 mm and 437 mm, respectively. The lengths can be used to
determine the locations of the ply drop-off structure.
It is noted that the composite structure with ply drop-off
should follow the rules of the design criteria. Studies indicated
that the use of the ply drop-off structure was disadvantageous for
the structural integrity (Bailie et al. 1997; He et al. 2000). The
uneven phenomenon on the distribution of stress and deforma-
tion also appeared. Thus, the structural strength was reduced and
the structure was easily broken. However, these broken structures
can be reduced and avoided by the following rules of the design
(Mukherjee and Varughese 2001; Allegri et al. 2009; Irisarri et al.
2014). Firstly, the structural design satisfies the requirement of
symmetric, continuous and balance on the thin panel. Secondly,
the ply drop-off can not be used to the surface layer to avoid the
failure and damage in the surface. Thirdly, the angle of laminate
plate should not be greater than 7 degrees. Meanwhile, the dis-
tance between the plies drop-off should be at least 8 times larger
than the thickness of a single layer. And the location of ply drop
off is alternative to avoid the gathering in the same place. In this
paper, considering the crashworthiness requirements of B-pillar
in the side impact and the roof crush, the number of lay-up is
designated as the design variable. In this process, to control the
number of variables, the lay-up [0/90]n is used for each sub-
laminate of composite B-pillar. And the thickness of each layer
is set to 0.125 mm. This simple symmetrical laminate helps to
determine the spread quantities of each sub-laminate. For the
taper panel, it belongs to the transition area whose blank space
is filled by the resin, known as resin pockets which can realize
smooth transition of the structure surface. A typical structure with
ply drop-off is clearly shown in Fig. 3.
3 Finite element models
Ford Taurus car model built by the National Crash Analysis
Center (NCAC) is used to the following simulation analysis.
According to the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle-Safety Standards

Fig. 3 A typical structure with ply drop-off Fig. 4 The finite element model of vehicle roof crush
968 Q. Liu et al.

Fig. 5 Comparison of the 35

simulation and experiment on the
relationship between crushing 30
force and crushing displacement
25

Force(kN)
20

15
Experiment
10 Simulation

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Displacement(mm)

216 (FMVSS 216), the finite element model of the vehicle roof
crush analysis was established. Then, the finite element model of
the vehicle side impact based on the side impact test requirements
of the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) was also built.
The finite element models of two kinds of analysis condition
were set up and simulated, respectively. Before building the ve-
hicle crash models, the finite element model of composite B-
pillar needs to be established.
3.1 Finite element model of composite B-pillar
The finite element model of the composite B-pillar with ply
drop-off is established as shown in Fig. 2. Shell elements are
generated in HYPERMESH software. The element size is set
to 10 mm and the total number of element is 4793. The
ELFORM is set to 16 for obtaining high precision in calcula-
tion. T700 Carbon fiber/2510 epoxy resin unidirectional pre-
preg is used here. The material parameters are shown in
Table 1. The MAT54–55 as composite constitutive model in
LS-DYNA is used to establish the finite element material
model of composite B-pillar structure.
In this paper, the classical laminated plate theory is used to
analyze the laminated plate stiffness. Many kinds of compos-
ite material strength criteria are available. LS-DYNA MAT
54–55 material model’s failure criteria are Chang-Chang fail-
ure criterion and Tsai-Wu failure criterion. This article selects
the Chang-Chang failure criterion of MAT54, which is a wide-
ly used one and can meet the accuracy requirements in engi-
neering. Chang-Chang failure criterion contains four failure
modes: the tensile fiber mode, the compressive fiber mode,
the tensile matrix mode and the compressive matrix mode. In
the actual cases, the failures of composite laminates are varied
and some of them are interactive. As the damage is accumu-
lated, the strength of composite laminates is gradually re-
duced. Chang-Chang strength criterion is introduced in a
weighing factor for the nonlinear shear stress term, which
takes the coupling effect of multiple failure modes into ac-
count to a certain extent.
Meanwhile, in order to improve the accuracy of simulation
process, some input parameters should be reasonably set in finite
element software. The softening reduction factor is used to re-
duce the material strength immediately in the crash-front ele-
ments. The strength reduction parameters are used to soften the

Fig. 6 The change of energy ×106

3.5
curves on roof crush simulation
3.0 Total energy
Internal energy
2.5 Kinetic energy
Hourglass energy
2.0 Interface energy
Energy/J

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0

-0.5
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06
Time/s
Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite B-pillar with ply...
Fig. 7 The finite element model of side impact
fiber tensile strength and reduce the compressive fiber strength
after matrix compressive failure, respectively. These progressive
failure parameters which cannot be measured experimentally
need to be determined by trial and error. In the crash simulation,
the softening reduction factor, softening factor of the fiber tensile
strength and reduction factor of the compressive fiber strength
after matrix compressive failure are set to 0.57, 0.5 and 1.2,
respectively.
3.2 The establishment and validation of roof crush model
The roof crush simulation is set up to simulate the collision of
roof in the rolling process of vehicle. According to the require-
ments of FMVSS 216, the finite element model is established as
shown Fig. 4. Full constraints at the bottom of the vehicle are
employed to simulate the fixed constraint of the beam at the
bottom of vehicle body. Rigid wall is created to simulate the rigid
surface with loads on the vehicle roof structure during the exper-
iment. The size of rigid wall is 762 mm × 1829 mm with the roll
angle of 25 degrees and the pitch angle of 5 degrees. The leading
edge center of the rigid test device is located at the place 254 mm
over the most front point of the vehicle roof. At the same time,
the rigid wall is in contact with the top surface of the vehicle and
its longitudinal center line passes through the contact point of the
vehicle roof.
It will consume enormous computational cost at the required
test speed 13 mm/s which is specified in the requirements of
FMVSS 216. In order to reduce the computation time, this paper
Fig. 8 The change of energy
2.5
curves on side impact simulation
2.0
1.5
Energy/J
1.0
0.5
0.0
-0.5
969
increases the loading speed of the rigid wall in roof crush. In the
literatures (Mao et al. 2004; Chen et al. 2007), researchers found
that the loading speed of the rigid wall can reasonably simulate
the experimental results under the control in kinetic energy and
internal energy ratio. In this paper, the speed of rigid wall is also
set to 2235.2 mm/s during the vehicle roof crush process.
The accuracy of the model of vehicle roof strength analysis is
verified by comparing the simulation results with the experimen-
tal results of collapsing force. The physical roof crush analysis of
this vehicle was imposed in literature (Bathe et al. 1999). The
relationship between crushing force and crushing displacement
of simulation is shown as Fig. 5. Through the comparison of the
simulated curve and the experimental curve in the literature, the
deviation is less than 5%. Meanwhile, the changes of energy
curves are also shown to demonstrate the feasibility of finite
element model in Fig. 6. The accuracy of the model has reached
the engineering practical requirements and the model can be used
for further research.
According to the requirements of FMVSS 216, this paper
describes roof strength by the ratio between top pressure and
vehicle mass. Normally the maximum bearing force of roof
should reach 2.5 times than the vehicle mass. The mass of this
car is 1539 kg. The maximum loading force should be 37.706
kN. Thus, roof strength of the B-pillar was set to be an objective
in the vehicle roof crush.
3.3 The establishment and validation of side impact model
Automobile side impact is a type of collision which often hap-
pens in the real life. It is very difficult to build a large number of
energy absorbing structures due to the limitation of the vehicle
space. So the safety protection of the side impact is indispensable.
According to the side impact test requirements of US-NCAP, the
finite element model of vehicle side impact is established and
shown in Fig. 7. The initial collision velocity of the MBD is
62 km/h. The angle between moving direction of MBD and
the longitudinal center line of test vehicle is 63 degrees. The
longitudinal center line of the moved barrier is aligned with the
×108
Total energy
Internal energy
Kinetic energy
Hourglass energy
Interface energy
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Time/s
970 Q. Liu et al.

Fig. 9 Comparison of the 7

velocity of vehicle mass center
between experiment and 6
simulation
5
Experiment

Velocity(m/s)
4
Simulation
3

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time(ms)

collision point of the test vehicle and perpendicular to the longi-
tudinal center line of the experimental vehicle with the coinci-
dence error of ±25 mm.
The change of energy curves are shown to demonstrate the
feasibility of side impact model in Fig. 8. The simulation results
can be verified by comparing with the experiment results. The
velocity curve of the center of vehicle mass and the intrusion
velocity curve of central B-pillar in side impact simulation are
compared with experiment curves from NHTSA Test 3263
(Marzougui et al. 2012) as shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10. The
pictures show the consistencies of curves are very high. So the
side impact model can be used for further study.
In the side impact, the intrusion velocity of B-pillar is an
important index to determine the living space of occupants and
the collision extrusion of the vehicle. Regulation requires that the
chest performance index should be less than or equal to 1.0 m/s
in the side impact (Hobbs et al. 1999). Normally, the chest per-
formance index is equal to the product between the instantaneous
compression of the rib and the deformation rate, known as the
viscosity coefficient. Thus, thoracic injury has a direct relation-
ship with the structure of the intrusion velocity in the central
region of the B-pillar. Therefore the intrusion velocity of the B-
pillar is set as an objective in the vehicle side impact. The value
of the velocity should be less than 11.0 m/s. At the same time, the
side intrusion is the main cause of the dummy injury in side
impact. In this paper, the intrusion deformation of B-pillar in side
impact is the average value of the maximum intrusion deforma-
tions of the vehicle threshold position, the middle position of the
door and the horizontal position of lower window frame. Tang
(2009) built a quadratic polynomial curve for the relationship
between maximum mean value of abbreviate injury scale (AIS)
in the drivers’ injury and deformation intrusion. When the aver-
age value of max AIS about occupant is 3, the intrusion value is
355 mm. Therefore, considering the error rate, the total intrusion
of the B-pillar shouldn’t be more than 350 mm.
4 Global sensitivity analysis of important parameters
4.1 Sensitivity analysis based on variance decomposition
Global sensitivity analysis is the most generally used measure for
evaluating the importance of linear or non-linear systems (Cui
et al. 2013). Based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) decompo-
sition, Sobol’ proposed a global sensitivity analysis method
(Sobol’ 1993). A square-integrable-function f(x) defined in the

Fig. 10 Comparison of the 12

intrusion velocity curve of B-
pillar between experiment and 10
simulation
Intrusion V elocity(m/s)

Experiment
4 Simulation

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time(ms)
Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite B-pillar with ply... 971

Table 2 The detailed

introduction of design parameters Design parameters Notes Initial values The range space

x1 The number of thick panels on outer plate 20 [8, 30]

x2 The number of thin panels on outer plate 15 [8, 30]
x3 The number of thick panels on inner plate 20 [8, 30]
x4 The number of thin panels on inner plate 15 [8, 30]

unit hypercube Rn. It can achieve the high dimension model The total variance S tot
i is given, as follows,
representation by the integral calculation as follows,
S i tot ¼ 1−S ∼i ð9Þ
n

f ðxÞ ¼ f 0 þ ∑ f i ðxi Þ þ ∑ f ij xi ; x j ð1Þ
i¼1 1 ≤ i< j ≤ n where S∼i is the Sobol’ index of dummy variables correspond-
ing to all but the Sobol’ indices of subset terms, which contain
þ ⋯ þ f 12⋯n ðx1 ; x2 ; ⋯; xn Þ
the variable xi. Thus, the total Sobol’ index S tot
i of variable xi is
The ANOVA decomposition is unique if the following computed. Similarly, higher order total Sobol’ indices can also
conditions are satisfied. be calculated.
The sum of all the Sobol’ indices is one, as follows,
1
∫0 f i1 i2 ⋯is ðxi1 ; xi2 ; ⋯xis Þdxk ¼ 0 for k ¼ i1 i2 ⋯is ; 1 ≤ i1 i2 ⋯is ≤ n ð2Þ ∑ Si þ ∑ S ij þ ⋯ þ S 12⋯n ¼ 1 ð10Þ
1≤i≤n 1 ≤ i< j ≤ n

In above expansion, the individual terms can be calculated

by integrating f(x) according to the following formulas:
4.2 Sensitivity analysis method on uncertainty parameters
f 0 ¼ ∫ f ðxÞdx ð3Þ
Based on the mathematic expressions of the above sec-
f i ðxi Þ ¼ − f 0 þ ∫f ðxÞ ∏ dxk ð4Þ tion, this paper derives some formulas to assess the im-
k≠i portance of uncertainty parameters. The detailed deriva-


 tion is showed as follows.
f ij xi ; x j ¼ −f 0 −f i ðxi Þ−f j x j þ ∫ f ðxÞ ∏ dxk ð5Þ Assume the input parameter x ∼ N(μ, σ), its probability
k≠i; j
density function can be represented as Φ(x). In order to
uniquely decompose the performance function, the following
The Sobol’ functions satisfy orthogonal condition when condition must be satisfied, namely
the two functions are different on at least one of the sub-
1
scripts, as follows, ∫0 f i1 i2 ⋯is ðxi1 ; xi2 ; ⋯xis Þϕ1 ðxk Þdxk ¼ 0 for
ð11Þ

 k ¼ i1 i2 ⋯is ; 1 ≤ i1 i2 ⋯is ≤ n
∫Rn f i1 ;i2 ;⋯is ðxi1 xi2 ; ⋯; xi1 Þ  f j1 ; j2 ;⋯ js x j1 x j2 ; ⋯; x j1 dx ¼ 0 ð6Þ
So, the function items in the (1) can be rewritten by using
According to conditions of (2) and (6), the variance decom- the following formulas.
position is obtained by integrating f(x) with respect to all the
parameters, as follows, f 0 ¼ ∫f ðxÞΦðxÞdx ð12Þ

D ¼ ∑ Di þ ∑ Dij þ ⋯ þ D12⋯n ð7Þ ∫Rn−1 f ðxÞΦn−1 ðx∼i ; xÞdx∼i

1≤i≤n 1 ≤ i< j ≤ n f i ð xi Þ ¼ − f 0 þ ð13Þ
Φ 1 ð xi Þ


w h e r e D ¼ ∫Rn f 2 ðxÞdx−f 0 2 , Di ¼ ∫R1 f i 2 ðxi Þdxi ,

 ∫ n−2 f ðxÞΦn−2 x∼i ; x∼ j ; x dx∼ij

 f ij xi ; x j ¼ − f 0 − f i ðxi Þ−f j x j þ R
 ð14Þ
Φ2 xi ; x j
Dij ¼ ∫R2 f ij 2 xi ; x j dxi dx j .
Following the above variance (7), the Sobol’ sensitivity The (6) can also be rewritten to achieve the new orthog-
indices are defined as follows, onal condition.
Di Dij

Si ¼ ; S ij ¼ ∫Rn f i1 ;i2 ;⋯is ðxi1 xi2 ; ⋯; xi1 Þ  f x j1 x j2 ; ⋯; x j1 ΦðxÞdx ¼ 0 ð15Þ
D D ð8Þ j1 ; j2 ;⋯ js

Naturally, the mathematical expression of variance decom-

where Si is first order sensitivity index and Sij is second order position is the same as the above (7). Thus, the sensitivity
sensitivity index. In the same way, higher order sensitivity indices of uncertainty parameters can also be easily calculated
Sobol’ indices can be calculated. by using the above (8) (9).
972 Q. Liu et al.

Table 3 The samplings of design

variables and the corresponding No. Design variables The output responses
output responses
x1 x2 x3 x4 Roof strength (kN) B-velocity (m/s) B-intrusion(mm)

1 20 16 20 16 37.698 11.346 322.7

2 9 15 15 13 34.587 11.890 351.6
3 18 8 20 14 37.400 11.189 347.5
4 11 20 10 22 34.166 12.103 354.1
5 16 18 24 9 37.848 11.189 323.5
6 19 19 18 19 37.618 11.462 319.1
7 30 21 22 19 39.080 11.311 305.4
8 21 16 29 18 39.202 11.006 316.9
9 19 13 11 28 35.380 11.950 339.3
10 17 10 9 17 34.457 11.995 350.6
11 13 28 25 13 37.540 11.710 322.1
12 22 25 8 25 34.652 11.925 330.5
13 25 19 25 29 39.220 11.296 305.4
14 10 10 16 23 34.874 11.945 348.0
15 13 25 12 11 34.631 12.054 345.2
16 29 17 14 26 37.393 11.741 322.8
17 23 28 19 12 38.181 11.591 304.5
18 12 26 28 28 38.060 11.765 329.2
19 10 12 27 16 37.211 11.394 341.7
20 20 16 13 8 35.944 11.389 334.6
21 28 23 10 15 36.417 11.247 325.5
22 28 11 13 16 36.889 11.496 342.4
23 24 9 22 24 38.632 11.205 333.9
24 22 27 28 21 39.154 11.075 296.5
25 8 22 21 20 35.694 12.704 348.2
26 27 13 23 10 38.644 10.821 324.4
27 26 29 19 25 38.410 11.422 299.5
28 25 24 30 10 39.742 11.261 302.9
29 16 22 17 30 36.588 11.581 327.3
30 14 14 26 27 38.381 11.497 326.9
31 15 30 16 22 36.214 11.788 335.2
32 21 26 30 26 39.506 11.124 296.2
33 30 12 21 12 38.728 10.993 327.4
34 26 30 12 17 36.386 11.917 327.4
35 12 8 26 21 37.416 11.313 341.1
36 17 17 8 30 34.380 12.268 356.6
37 8 21 17 8 34.708 12.176 352.6
38 15 27 9 14 34.155 12.138 359.3
39 9 17 23 18 36.454 11.997 341.9
40 17 15 30 16 38.545 11.042 319.9

4.3 The ranking of important parameters on the B-pillar
The thicknesses of B-pillar sub-laminates are design concerns,
but the structure thickness is determined by the ply numbers. It is
noted that the thickness of each unidirectional prepreg is
0.125 mm. So the number of lay-up as the design variables is
researched. The uncertainty parameters belong to the uniform
distribution, namely X ∼ U(8, 30). It means the thickness of
each sub-laminate is 1.0 mm ~ 3.75 mm. The detailed instruction
is showed in the Table 2. The output responses consist of roof
strength which stands for the maximum crushing force in roof
crush, B-intrusion which stands for the intrusion of B-pillar in
Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite B-pillar with ply... 973

Table 4 The sensitivity indices of uncertainty parameters on the the variables x1 and x3 are large. The importance of other
objective functions
variables can not be ignored, except the effect of variable x4
The output responses The sensitivity indices on the B-intrusion function. In Fig. 11, it clearly shows the
ranking of important variables on the objective functions, as
x1 x2 x3 x4
1 > S 3 > S 2 > S 4 . The above data can quantify the
S tot tot tot tot

Roof strength 0.473 0.052 0.446 0.031 effects of important variables and give the evaluated ranking
B-velocity 0.467 0.153 0.360 0.105
though sensitivity analysis. It is very useful to provide the
B-intrusion 0.471 0.256 0.349 0.007
guidance and help for the design and optimization of B-pil-
lar. At the same time, it helps to improve the computation
efficient and save the design cost.
side impact, B-velocity stands for the maximum intrusion veloc-
ity of B-pillar in side impact. These regulation requirements are
discussed and finalized in the Section 2 of this paper. 4.4 The optimization analysis of the composite B-pillar
For most engineering problems, many meta-models with drop-off
are widely used to reduce the design cost and computa-
tional burden, especially for a lot of high complexity In the section, to obtain better performance of the composite B-
models. In the paper, Response Surface Models (RSM) pillar with drop-off, the optimization analysis is performed in
is adopted to obtain the objective functions. To improve the guidance of sensitivity analysis. The optimized results are
the fitting precision, 40 samples are generated by using compared to the output responses of the initial model. Firstly, as
latin-hypercube sampling. In terms of the computation of the objective function, the relationship of the weight of B-pillar
roof crush and side impact model in the above section, with ply numbers is established for the conditions of roof crush
the output responses can be achieved on roof strength, B- and side impact, respectively. Then, the constraints of roof
velocity and B-intrusion, respectively. The samplings of strength, the velocity and intrusion of B-pillar can be given
the design variables and the corresponding output re- according to the regulation requirement and the above discus-
sponses are clearly illustrated in Table 3. sions in Section 3, as shown the (16). In Section 4.3, it clearly
Based on the above global sensitivity measure, the com- shows that the effects of variables x1 and x3 are more important
putational sensitivity indices of uncertainty parameters of the than x2 and x4. Therefore, the ranges of variables x2 and x4 can
composite B-pillar with ply drop off on the objective func- be reduced to diminish the search scope of optimization analy-
tions roof strength, B-velocity and B-intrusion are listed in sis. Finally, the optimization analysis of B-pillar structure can
Table 4, respectively. On the third row, data indicate that the be formulated as follows:
variables x1 and x3 have obvious effects on roof strength 8
> find xi ; i ¼ 1; ⋯; 4
function. The computational results show the sum of the >
>
> min
> 8 M ðxÞ
>
>
sensitivity indices S tot1 ¼ 0:473, S 3 ¼ 0:446 accounts for
tot
>
> < F ðxÞ ≤ 37:706kN
>
>
>
90% in all the sensitivity indices. However, the influence < st: I ðxÞ ≤ 350mm
.
>
: DðxÞ ≤ 11m s ð16Þ
from the variables x2 and x4 can be ignored. The results >
>
>
> 8
can also prove the thick panel of outer plate is crucial in roof >
> < 8 ≤x1 ≤30; 12 ≤x2 ≤ 24
>
>
crush of vehicle. For the B-velocity and B-intrusion func- >
> 8 ≤x3 ≤30; 12 ≤x4 ≤ 24
> x
: :
tions, both the fourth and fifth row data show the effects of x1 ; ⋯; x4 ∈N *

0.50
Fig. 11 The ranking of important Roof strength
variables on the objective 0.45 B-intrusion
B-velocity
functions
0.40

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00
974 Q. Liu et al.

Table 5 The improvement

results on the composite B-pillar The output Before After optimization Improvement%
with ply drop-off responses optimization
Numerical calculation FE validation Error%

Force(kN) 34.85 39.30 38.78 1.32% 11.28%

B-intrusion (mm) 374.31 325.36 344.82 5.98% 7.88%
B-velocity (m/s) 11.14 10.95 10.33 5.66% 7.27%
Mass(kg) 5.17 1.66 1.67 0.60% 67.70%

where M(x) stands for the weight of B-pillar; F(x) stands for
the maximum crushing force in roof crush; I(x) B-intrusion
stands for the intrusion of B-pillar in side impact; V(x) stands
for the maximum intrusion velocity in middle region of B-
pillar; x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 are the ply numbers of plies of four
sub-laminates of B-pillar, respectively. Obviously, they be-
long to positive integers.
Based on the genetic algorithm (GA), the optimization re-
sults are obtained as shown in Table 5. In order to validate the
feasibility of the optimal results, finite element (FE) simula-
tions for roof crush and side impact are performed again. The
deviations between the numerical calculations and FE results
are all less than 6%. Normally, the accuracy of the optimized
results is acceptable.
The optimal solutions are as follows: x1 = 20 , x2 = 12 ,
x3 = 26 , x4 = 15. Meanwhile, it is easy to determine the thick-
nesses of each sub-laminate of composite B-pillar. The original
mass of B-pillar (including B-pillar reinforcement) is 5.17 kg,
while the mass of composite B-pillar with ply drop-off structure
is 1.67 kg. Due to the use of composite ply drop-off structure
technique and the removal of reinforcement, the weight of B-
pillar is reduced by 67.70%, and the crashworthiness of vehi-
cles is also improved. In Fig. 12, the comparison is given for
the deformation of the metallic and composite B-pillar.
5 Conclusion
In the paper, the composite B-pillar with ply drop-off is
designed for improving the crashworthiness and light-
weight of vehicle. It comprehensively considers the
manufacture process and the collision condition and
brings forth new ideas for the structural design of B-
pillar. The thicknesses of the outer and inner are easily
changed for the composite B-pillar with ply drop-off.
Compared with the traditional design, the limitation of
design and optimization is relaxed for the performance
improvement of B-pillar. In addition, in terms of the
traditional global sensitivity analysis, this paper com-
pletes the extension of the method and the derivation
of formula to evaluate the importance of design param-
eters. Based on the derived formulas, this paper calcu-
lates and quantifies the ranking of design parameters. It
can guide the follow-up design and optimization of B-
pillar and help the improvement of design cost and ef-
ficiency. Finally, through optimization analysis of struc-
tural design, it gives the optimized ply numbers of B-
pillar sub-laminates. The weight of the optimal compos-
ite B-pillar is reduced by 67.70% and the crashworthi-
ness of B pillar is improved.

Fig. 12 The comparison of

deformation of the metallic and
composite B-pillar

The metallic B-pillar Th e composite B-pillar

Structural design and global sensitivity analysis of the composite B-pillar with ply...
Acknowledgements This work is supported by the National Science
Foundation of China (51575171, 11232004) and the graduate student
research innovation project of Hunan province (CX2016B090).
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