Car Body

Car bodies are complex structures with a high number of contact interfaces. A typical approach for a durability analysis is to apply external loads on a linear inertia relief calculation. With this method contact stresses and resonances within the structure are neglected. In a more advanced approach the car body is included as a flexible structure in a multibody system and contact interaction is accounted with MAMBA.

For a local durability analysis, as in the shown example of a rear battery carrier, the user can select contacts in the area of interest. The fatigue results for the typically highly loaded spot welds showed improved correlation to testing when using MAMBA.

If the complete car body shall be assessed then MAMBA can automatically identify all relevant contacts based on reference simulations. This simulation approach allows an accurate durability analyses considering structural vibrations and nonlinear contacts.

Benefits

Automated detection of relevant contacts in complex elastic structures
Influence of structural vibrations considered
Improved fatigue analysis process for car bodies

Contact interfaces within the rear section of a car body

Fatigue assessment results which correlated very well with the results obtained from physical testing (100% percent represents the most damaged spot weld obtained with the linear model)