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