Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon

fiber composite material
S.S. Godara ⇑, Shiv Narayan Nagar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rajasthan Technical University Kota, Rajasthan 324010, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The bumper is a structural member which is used to absorb the impact or sudden loads in the automobile
Received 19 January 2020 vehicles, which are applied intentionally or unintentionally. The objective for the incorporation of the
Accepted 13 February 2020 bumper is when the vehicle is suspended to sudden or impact loads by any collision, then it is used to
Available online xxxx
absorb that impact energy and is helpful for the safety of the passengers as well as for the vehicle.
In this present work, the displacement and stress analysis and design optimization of the automobile
Keywords: vehicle frontal bumper beam is achieved by designing eight different cross sections with the help of
Bumper beam
mechanical modeling based software Creo. The various cross-sections designed are (a) Open Hat section,
Cross section
Impact analysis
(b) C section, (c) Rolled form section, (d) Open B section, (e) Close B section, (f) Hat close box section, (g) E
Creo section, (h) Rectangle section. The carbon fiber composite material is used for this purpose. To model
HyperMesh (opticstruct) these bumper beams, the profile used is flat with the curved angle. The designed sections are analyzed
as per the national highway traffic safety administration, and federal motor vehicles safety standards reg-
ulations. The frontal perpendicular impact test is performed on the bumper beam at low-speed load with
the help of finite element software HyperMesh. In the present work, the material used is carbon fiber
composite.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and of the scientific committee of the 10th International Conference of Materials Processing and
Characterization.

1. Introduction
In the present scenario, due to automation and advance in tech-
nology, the reliability of the machines are increased and fewer
efforts are provided to the human body. In such time due to the
increasing population, the mode of transportation is more predom-
inant and the frequency of vehicles has increased exponentially
and besides this, the technology has provided the speed for reduc-
tion of time. But with the carelessness and cruise speed, the
chances of accidents are increasing drastically and the deaths
caused by road accidents are at a higher rate. The data shown by
the National safety council in the year 1994 tells that 20 million
vehicles are crashed on roads in the US, results in the death of
43,000 people and about 2.1 million people are injured and hospi-
talized. Also, for India as per Indian road accident statics tell that
nearly 5 lakh road accidents are taking place per year and causing
a loss of more than 1.46 L people’s life.
⇑ Corresponding author.
The accidents caused by the motor vehicles are 95.5% of the
total accidents on road. In the year 2015 the major contribution
in the road accidents is taken by 2 wheelers i.e. 28.8% after it the
second category was the light four wheeler like cars and their con-
tribution was 23.6% followed by heavy vehicles like tractors, trucks
was 19.7% and 9% contribution was of other vehicles. Earlier to
control the road accidents the manufacturers have implanted some
technology to reduce road accidents are traction control, anti-lock
braking system, airbags, steel cells and daytime running lamps,
then introduced the bumper beam with the aim that when the
vehicle is suspended to sudden or impact loading by any collision,
then it is used to absorb that impact energy and is helpful for the
safety of the passenger as well as the vehicle.
Reddy and Thota Harish [1] included various important aspects
like structure, impact conditions, shape, and materials to improve
the crash performance while having a collision in the bumper
beam analysis. The analysis was carried forward by modeling the
bumper beam in Catia V5 R20 software followed by meshing per-
formed in FE software hyper mesh R13 and Altair radioss software
was used for impact analysis. Yedukondalu et al. [2] presented the
crash analysis of car cross member bumper beam. The stiffness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and of the scientific committee of the 10th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization.

Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
2 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
performance, the crash were examined in their work by the
authors. The software used for the simulation of car bumper beam
model in their analysis. Davoodi et al. [3] studied a conceptual
design of fiber reinforced epoxy composite bumper absorber. For
deciding the quantity of the absorbers for the design the experi-
mental data was taken by analyzing the absorber experimentally.
Finally, the elliptical shaped composite energy absorber consisting
of two slots at both the ends was considered. They also studied the
method for bumper and fascia for energy fixing. Rajani et al. [4]
used a bumper for the low passenger vehicle, Benz car.
The impact energy in this bumper was either absorbed by
deforming or is transferred in the perpendicular direction of the
impact at various speeds (40, 60, 75 & 80 km/h). The materials used
for the analyses are E-glass epoxy and carbon epoxy materials 3D
modeled by using the software Pro-Engineer and analysis done in
Cosmos software. Davoodi et al. [5] performed the study of the
shape or the cross-section of the bumper beam. They presented
the result as the effects of the cross-sections in the energy damping
rate and the strength is magnified by the bending resistance. Ham-
bali et al. [6] deals with selecting the materials used for designing
the bumper. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is the most
suitable material. Six various kinds of composite materials were
used to show the application of AHP. The final selection of material
for the bumper beam was based on the 8 main factors and 12 sub-
factors. It was seen from AHP analysis that the glass fiber epoxy
contains the maximum value of the mass fraction i.e. 25.7%. Xian
Wu et al. [7] designed a bumper beam having minimum weight
by the use of Glass-Material Thermoplastic (GMT) as a material.
The modeling was done in Catia, solved in LS-dyna and the result
was analyzed in Ansys V8.0. Marzbanrad et al. [8] included the var-
ious parameters to design as well as analyze the bumper beam
used in automotive for the improvement in crash design at low
velocity.
The bumper beam was simulated as per the low-speed standard
of automotive stated in E.C.E. United Nations Agreement, Regula-
tion no. 42, 1994. The analysis of the bumper beam was done for
aluminum and composite materials for the weight and impact
behavior comparison. Sagar and Kamalakkannan [9] discussed
the Material, Structure, Shape and loading conditions over a bum-
per in case of a head-on crash and studied the analysis results and
corroborate with the existing ones and propose modifications for
design improvement or change.
Catia, Hypermesh, Ls-Dyna software was employed to predict
the material behavior during impact. Jacob and Arunkumar [10]
improved the crashworthiness of an automobile bumper for repli-
cated steel bumper to the foam and honeycomb incorporated bum-
pers. In this work, the energy absorption capacity was increased by
60% compared to the existing steel bumper and in the foam bum-
per. PTC Cero, Hyper mesh, and LS-Dyna software were employed
to predict the material behavior during impact. Srinivas et al.
[11] developed a method of design to reduce the weight of the
vehicle by taking into consideration the front crashworthiness
and pedestrian impact safety requirement. The nonlinear explicit
dynamic analysis was solved in LS-Dyna.
As per FNVSS 208, the aim of a crash test is to measure the acci-
dental intensity of the passenger vehicle. This helps in the neces-
sary requirements for the safety of occupants in standard
accidents. This aims to improve the vehicle construction for the
accidental protection of occupant crash. The constructional design
helps to reduce the two favorable effects of accidents. (a) Degrada-
tion of the occupant compartment survival space and (b) the occu-
pant compartment deceleration severity. In both the effects, the
chances of injuries are there. Initially, the increase in chances of
occupant contact with the intruding vehicle components and sec-
ond, due to chances of internal injuries to the occupants. The
degradation of the occupant compartment survival space is mea-
Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
sured by the intrusion, while occupant compartment deceleration
severity is measured by the amplitude and time duration of the
crash pulse.
NHTSA has introduced the first regulation on the passenger car
bumpers. FMVSB has introduced ‘‘outer safety” on 1st sept 1972
when most companies have started their production of vehicles
in 1973. The standard safety factors like headlamp and fuel system,
impact testing from obstructing at 5 mile/h (8 km/h) and rear
bumper system testing at 2.5 miles/h (4 km/h). The 1974 model
passenger cars were implemented as per standards which can
make an angle effect at 5 miles/h (8 km/h) without creating any
effect in headlamps and small instruments. The four crash were
implemented on the basis of three different examples of Plymouth
horizon by IIHS on engine 1990. The results have pointed out the
changes in bumper rules as per U.S. Bumper rules (repair costs
quoted in 1990 United States dollars).
At the beginning of 2009, the Canada regulation has provided an
equilibrium with American federal standards and international ECE
rules. The consumers are not happy with the changes that are
made in the field of bumper development but Canadian regulators
assume that in worldwide the speed used is of 4 km/h and the rules
are strict with pedestrian safety instead of pedestrian accidents.
2. Problem definition
In the present analysis, the various bumper beam designs are
considered and improvement in design is done. The modeling of
the bumper beam is done in Creo 2.0 and for the analysis, the Finite
element software Hypermesh was used with the help of optistruct
solver for displacement and stress estimations. For the analysis,
eight cross sections are designed and the carbon fiber composite
material is taken for the analysis purpose.
3. Impact mechanics
3.1. Kinetic energy during the impact
In a passenger vehicle, the whole body works like a chassis. Due
to this reason, the structure of the body is designed in such a way
that it should transmit the whole energy. When a vehicle is in run-
ning state the vehicle comprises some kinetic energy and while
accident the vehicle comes into rest i.e. zero velocity than in that
condition it has zero kinetic energy. To reduce the injuries the
kinetic energy should be zero following a very slow speed reduc-
tion trend and in a similar pattern. For optimal frontal crash behav-
ior, the kinetic energy should be vanished by the frontal structure.
Mass of the passenger car with bumper ðTATA indicaÞ ¼ 1400 kg
Average mass of 5 persons ¼ 300 kg
Total weight ¼ 1400 þ 300 ¼ 1700
As per equation of motion
v ¼ u þ at ð1Þ
Assume this car is hitting at another identical one and it will
stop in 0.1 s.
Deceleration of the car
a ¼ ðu - vÞ= t ð2Þ
Force acted during collision
F ¼ ma ð3Þ
where
 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx 3

Table 1 Table 3
Bumper beam load calculation. Dimensional parameter of the bumper [12].

Car speed Velocity Deceleration Force Pressure (N/ S. No Parameter Description Value
(km/h) (m/s) (m/s2) (N) mm2)
1. L Length of bumper beam 1300 mm
10 2.77 27.7 47,090 0.582 2. W Width of bumper beam 65 mm
20 5.55 55.5 94,444 1.167 3. H Height of bumper beam 60 mm
30 8.33 83.3 141,666 1.751 4. t Thickness of bumper beam 1.6 mm
5. H Angle of bumper beam 26

4.1. Material

The crash analysis was performed on these eight designs, which

are (a) Open Hat section, (b) C section, (c) Rolled form section, (d)
Open B section, (e) Close B section, (f) Hat close box section, (g) E
section, (h) Rectangle section. There are variety of materials avail-
able to analyse these sections. As carbon fiber composite is lightest
among all material and also, most commonly used in the automo-
tive industry. Hence, the carbon fiber composite material is consid-
ered for these designs of the bumper beam. The properties of the
material are shown in Table 2.

Fig. 1. Modeling in creo 2.0 using rectangular cross section. 4.2. Cross sections

For designing a bumper beam the cross section of the bumper

v = final velocity of the car in m/s
plays a very important role. There is direct contact between the
u = initial velocity of car in m/s
bumper cross-section and impact. The material energy absorption
t = time after which vehicle stopped in seconds
is decided by the cross section of the bumper beam. Apart from
F = impact force
energy absorption, the cross section helps to optimize strength,
dimensional stability and damping capacity. As compared with
Pressure acted on the bumper
other parameters it has significant effects on the energy damping
P ¼ F=A ð4Þ rate and bending resistance.
The Indica car dimensional parameters as shown in Table 3 is
where A is surface area of collision on bumper beam. used for analysis.
Bumper beam load calculations are shown in Table 1.

4. Modeling
To achieve good impact behavior of bumper beam the improve-
ment in design has been implemented by varying cross-section
designs, which are shown in the Fig. 3. The modeling is done in
Creo software and analysis is performed by using hypermesh soft-
ware. The modeling obtained with the help of Creo software for
rectangular section is shown in Fig. 1. The dimensions of the
modeled rectangular section are shown in Fig. 2.
4.3. Meshing
The thickness of the bumper beam and brackets is less com-
pared to other dimensions so the shell element is used and the uni-
form mesh is generated. The meshing is originated by the 2D
meshing because the improvements in meshing quality are easy
to do in 2D meshing. The element used for the 2D meshing is tria
element with the element size of 4 mm. Then after performing
quality checks, the 2D tria mesh is converted into tetra mesh of
4 mm size by using a dummy solid element. The meshed model

Fig. 2. Dimensions of bumper beam.

Table 2
Properties of the material used for bumper beam.

Material name Young’s modulus (MPa) Poisson’s ratio Density (ton/mm3) Yield strength (MPa)
Carbon fiber composite 70,000 0.1 1.76e9 570

Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
4 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 3. Modeling of various cross sections in creo 2.0 (a) Open Hat section, (b) C section, (c) Rolled form section, (d) Open B section, (e) Close B section, (f) Hat close box section,
(g) E section, (h) Rectangle section.
Fig. 4. Meshed model of a bumper beam with rectangular cross section.
of a steel bumper beam with the rectangular cross section is shown
in Fig. 4.
5. Result and discussion
The boundary conditions as shown in Fig. 5 are used for the
analysis of the bumper beam in HyperMesh. Boundary condition
contains pressure on the frontal area and the bracket ends are
constrained.
The stresses induced after performing impact test at low speed
i.e. 10, 20 and 30 km/h are shown in Fig. 6. The red color (grids
Fig. 5. Boundary condition for bumper beam.
Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
8947) shows the maximum induced stress while the grey color
(grids 21633) shows the minimum stress.
5.1. Stress and displacement analysis on carbon fiber bumper beam
The bumper beams of different cross sections which were
modeled in PTC creo are imported in a Finite Element Software
HyperMesh where the meshing of the beams is done. After
applying the boundary conditions the beam was analyzed by
the help of OpticStruct solver V13.0.
The stress and displacement induced after performing impact
test at low speed i.e. 10 km/h is shown in the Figs. 6 and 7. The
red color shows the maximum induced stress and displacement
while the grey color shows the minimum stress and displace-
ment. Table 4–6 shows the stresses and displacements obtained
after performing impact test for all eight designs at 10, 20 and
30 km/h speed respectively.
The obtained stresses are maximum von mises stresses which
are having a region near to hinges because of the stress concentra-
tion and are not directly involved to the bending impact region. For
present work, the stresses which considered are bending stresses
at the impact region as shown in Fig. 6 by the light green color.
The area enclosing this region has a small variation in the value
of stress from maximum to minimum so the average value is
obtained and considered for further analysis.
5.2. Stress and displacement curves
In Fig. 8, X-axis on the graph represents the number of design
and Y-axis represents the average von mises stress in the impact
region and in Fig. 9 X-axis on the graph represents the number
of design and Y-axis represents the maximum displacement
obtained at the impact region. The variation in stress and displace-
ment at all three speeds for all eight designs for carbon fiber is
shown graphically. It is observed from stress curve that curves will
start rising from design 1 and will reach the maximum value at
design 2 and then will start falling and fall till design 5 after that
it will again rise to a second highest value at design 7. The same
pattern is observed in the displacement curve except for the min-
imum value of displacement is observed at design 4 instead of
design 5.
 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

Fig. 6. Stresses induced after performing impact test at low speed i.e. 10 km/h.

Fig. 7. Displacement induced after performing impact test at low speed i.e. 10 km/h.

Table 4
Stress and displacement induced at 10 km/h.

No of Cross section used in design of bumper Maximum von-mises stress observed Average von-mises stress at impact region Maximum displacement
design beam (Mpa) (Mpa) (mm)
Design 1 Open Hat section 648.7 180.2 6.663
Design 2 C section 908.0 252.25 8.197
Design 3 Rolled form section 479.3 239.65 6.550
Design 4 Open B section 333.3 167 3.743
Design 5 Close B section 350.3 136.25 3.851
Design 6 Hat close section 372.2 186.1 4.224
Design 7 E section 764.3 212.3 7.265
Design 8 Rectangle section 342.6 172.3 3.714

Table 5
Stress and displacement induced at 20 km/h.

No of Cross section used in design of bumper Maximum von-mises stress observed Average von-mises stress at impact region Maximum displacement
design beam (Mpa) (Mpa) (mm)
Design 1 Open Hat section 1287 357.5 13.22
Design 2 C section 1801 500.4 16.26
Design 3 Rolled form section 950.9 475.45 13.00
Design 4 Open B section 661.4 331.35 7.426
Design 5 Close B section 695.0 270.3 7.640
Design 6 Hat close section 738.5 369.25 8.381
Design 7 E section 1516 421.25 14.41
Design 8 Rectangle section 679.7 341.85 7.369

Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
6 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 6
Stress and displacement induced at 30 km/h.

No of Cross section used in design of bumper Maximum von-mises stress observed Average von-mises stress at impact region Maximum displacement
design beam (Mpa) (Mpa) (mm)
Design 1 Open Hat section 1931 536.25 19.83
Design 2 C section 2702 750.6 24.40
Design 3 Rolled form section 1426 713.25 19.49
Design 4 Open B section 992.1 497.1 11.14
Design 5 Close B section 1043 405.45 11.46
Design 6 Hat close section 1108 553.85 12.57
Design 7 E section 2275 671.85 21.62
Design 8 Rectangle section 1020 512.8 11.05

Fig. 8. Stress curve for carbon fiber at all three speeds and all eight designs.

Fig. 9. Displacement curve for carbon fiber at all three speeds and all eight designs.

Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
 S.S. Godara, S. Narayan Nagar / Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
6. Conclusion
To achieve good impact behavior of bumper beam the improve-
ment in design has been implemented by varying cross-sections. In
the present work by the help of a finite element software Creo, the
modeling of eight cross sections and bumper beam has been done.
After modeling for the analysis again the FE software HyperMesh is
used. Here in this work, the crash analysis has been performed at
all eight designs made up of carbon fiber composite. The speed
variation is also considered by analyzing at various speeds i.e. 10,
20 and 30 km/h.
It has been observed that by the increment in speed the stress
also increases for the same cross-section and material and in cor-
respondence to speed the displacement is also increasing.
Design 2, 3 and 7 are unsafe as per stress criterion as the max-
imum stress in present work is less than the yield stress of the car-
bon fiber composite i.e. 570. The design criterion was maximum
displacement so the maximum safe displacement is given by
design 1 i.e. open hat section.
The stress in the open section is having a higher value than
close sections except for a case of open B section. And for displace-
ment open section is having a higher value than close sections
except for a case of the rolled form section.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Please cite this article as: S. S. Godara and S. Narayan Nagar, Analysis of frontal bumper beam of automobile vehicle by using carbon fiber composite mate-
rial, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.02.550
7
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