Lightweight design approach of an LFT-metal multi-material vehicle door concept

Abstract This work presents a new approach to design and validate an economical lightweight multi-material roof-integrated vehicle door concept made of long-fiber thermoplastics (LFT) metals with the consideration package constrain, critical static crash loading cases. A novel “two-ring” structure is introduced, which consists major load-bearing region minor but highly function-integrated region. concentrates on using cost-efficient materials, such as aluminum, LFTs uni-directional tapes (UD-Tapes), well corresponding mass-production methods. Using topology parameter optimization along load anisotropy analysis, rib optimized effective usage UD-Tapes guaranteed. In comparison steel reference, final LFT-metal achieves 20% weight reduction comparable or improved mechanical performance.